ANTONELLI LAB - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Assistant Professor at Uppsala University
Tobias is an assistant professor at Uppsala University. His research is focused on producing data and computational models to better understand the spatial distribution of biodiversity.
Tobias is an assistant professor at Uppsala University, leading the Biodiversity Data Lab (http://www.biodivlab.com/). His research is focused on producing data and computational models to better understand the spatial distribution of biodiversity. During his PhD in the Antonelli Lab he explored to what extent humans have increased global and regional extinction rates.
María was a biologist from Guatemala and conducted her Master's in the International Applied Ecology program IMAE. She is curious about mutualistic interactions, specially the ones implying generalist species. Her background in Ecology started with her bachelor studies in Guatemala where she investigated the populations genetics of stingless bees in the cloudy forest. She also has been involved in several projects about bat conservation, with special focus on frugivorous bats. Having guatemalan's great biodiversity as natural laboratory and learning about diverse ecosystems trough her master inspired María to investigate biogeographic patterns in the Neotropics. María conducted her Master's thesis in the Antonelli Lab investigating the role of non-specific mutualism on ecological speciation. Her research model included the non-specific mutualistic interaction between leaf-nosed bats and pepper plants and the phylogeographic analysis of this interaction which is key for forest regeneration.
Heléne did her research with the Antonelli Lab working on metagenomics in soil samples as a tool for biodiversity estimates.
Heléne investigated how soil samples and eDNA can be used as a biodiversity estimate to complement traditional species inventory. She was also working on a project developing a standardized and mathematical method to calculate species ranges using observational data. Heléne's interests are evolutionary processes and ecology of birds but also broad questions of evolution, species distributions and the interplay between species in ecosystems. During her BSc and MSc in evolutionary ecology at the University of Gothenburg, she worked with the evolution of sexually selected colour signalling in weaverbirds (Ploceidae). For her degree projects, she performed ancestral state reconstructions of these colour traits and spent time in the field in southern Africa sampling tissue and genetic data of the birds.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor at GU
Christine is working on phylogenomics and population genomics of tropical plants and patterns and processes related to diversification and speciation. She is a specialist in the palm family (Arecaceae) and her research is currently funded by the Swedish Research Council (2017-04980).
Ivan obtained a masters degree in Ecology and Natural Resources from Federal University of Ceará (UFC), Brazil. He was a PhD student at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil and did a ‘sandwich' internship in the Antonelli lab. Ivan collaborates with the Swedish Museum of Natural History. In his project, he addressed the evolutionary and biogeographical aspects of mountain forests of Northeastern Brazil, with a special focus on how past responses to climate changes affect plant distribution, migration and dispersal, phylogenetic and functional diversity. His main interest was in the use of floristic data and phylogenies to understand the biodiversity and diverse and particular patterns of the Neotropical region.
Erica was a PhD student estimating the evolutionary history of a pantropical plant group: Thunbergioideae (Acanthaceae).
Erica was a PhD student at the University of Zurich, co-supervised by Jürg Schönenberger and Alex Antonelli. Her PhD project aimed at reconstructing the evolutionary history and estimating the phylogeny of a tropical plant group: Thunbergioideae (Acanthaceae). She further improved targeted capture techniques for Illumina sequencing in Acanthaceae. By comparing the history of Thunbergioideae in different continents, we will shed further light on historical reasons for diversity disparities in the tropical world.
Romina is an evolutionary biologist with an interest in genetics as a tool to address a wide variety of questions in a range of disciplines.
Romina is an evolutionary biologist with an interest in genetics as a tool to address a wide variety of questions regarding the ecology, evolution and historical biogeography. She also maintains a strong interest in genomics and large datasets. Her work focuses on how evolutionary processes have shaped patterns of modern biodiversity in a range of bird species.
Sofie did a BSc project reviewing the current threats to Amazonian biodiversity.
Cássia is a postdoctoral researcher based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, working on the evolution and conservation of outcrop flora in old landscapes.
Cássia is an evolutionary biogeographer, interested in eco-genomics and diversification of plant family Apocynaceae, and in the evolutionary history of the flora of outcrops in old landscapes of South America (e.g. Campo Rupestre and Canga). Currently, she is a Newton International Fellow (The Royal Society) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, working with Eimear Nic Lughadha, Felix Forest, Alex Antonelli and Justin Moat. By investigating biogeography and traits among different lineages of flowering plants, and improving the resolution of molecular phylogenies using NGS approaches, she aims to understand the evolution of flora in old landscapes. She will also compare species and areas at risk to provide information relevant to conservation management.
Juan is an associate researcher working on the patterns of diversification and morphological variation in extinct and living mammals through time in relation to environmental changes and geographic distribution.
Juan was a post-doc funded by a post-doc mobility fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research focuses on the palaeobiology, systematics, biogeography and morphology of vertebrates, especially from South America. He studies the macroevolutionary changes of these lineages in relation to palaeoenvironmental conditions and geographic distributions, combining palaeontological and neontological data. He is particularly interested in the diversity and evolution of Neotropical mammals.
Rosie is a PhD student interested in the biodiversity, biogeography and conservation of rock outcrop flora in Latin America.
Rosie is interested in the biodiversity, biogeography and conservation of rock outcrop flora in Latin America, with a particular focus on Bolivia. The aim of the project is to document the flora and understand the evolutionary processes that shaped these environments. Rosie's research yield results on the global value of the plants in these areas to inform conservation management. Rosie is a NERC funded PhD student at the University of Exeter with Prof. Toby Pennington and Dr. Lucy Rowland, and RBG, Kew, with Prof. Alex Antonelli and Dr. Nicholas Hind.
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Paola - Associate Researcher
Paola finished her PhD working on phylogenetics, morphology, taxonomy, and biogeography in angiosperms with focus on Asteraceae.
Paola is a biologist working on phylogenetics, morphology, and taxonomy in different angiosperm families. Her main interest is in the early branches of Asteraceae, with focus on the subfamily Barnadesioideae. She is seeking to understand the phylogenetic relationship between all genera using target enrichment sequencing methods. She also aims at understanding the historical biogeography of the group. She finished her PhD at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, under the main supervision of Milton Groppo and co-supervised by Alexandre Antonelli at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Sonia specialises in biodiversity conventions and studies the conservation priorities of wild orchids in trade.
Sonia specialises in biodiversity conventions and is based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She started her PhD in 2020 on the "conservation priorities of wild orchids in trade". Sonia is researching the social complexities of CITES family listings, as well as CITES scientific decision-making processes. She is undertaking her PhD with Emily Woodhouse in the Human Ecology Research Group at UCL, with Alex Antonelli as a co-supervisor.
Kiran is an ecological modeller based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In her work, she is using Artificial Intelligence to prioritise biodiversity conservation.
Kiran is interested in systematic conservation planning in the context of biodiversity, connectivity and dynamic systems. In past lives, she has worked with bird migration, meerkats and bees, and has spent a lot of time on software development, particularly acoustic machine learning (rcnn), reinforcement learning, graph theory and multi-sensor geolocator tracking.
Job Titles:
- Camila - Former PhD Student
Camila is a biologist with an interest in ecological questions about the Amazon. She did her Master's degree in the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, INPA working with the impact of past fire in flooded forest in birds. She worked with phylogenetics analyses and landscape genetics of Elaenia ruficeps (Aves - Tyrannidae). She was a PhD student at the University of Gothenburg under the main supervision of Alexandre Antonelli and she worked on the hidden diversity of the Amazon using environmental DNA. Her project had the goal to quantify the diversity of the Amazon with samples of soils, litters and insects and to compare the different forest types: várzeas, igapós, terra firmes and campinas.
Louisa was a biodiversity and systematics Msc student examining biodiversity loss and material flows.
Louisa was a biodiversity and systematics MSc student with a focus on systematic theory. Her master thesis examined biodiversity loss and material flows. Looking at supply chain data and using spatial analysis she focused on determining the products with the largest impact on biodiversity hotspots.
Daniel is a former PhD student who worked on developing software and algorithms to understand patterns of biodiversity using network science and interactive visualizations.
Daniel is interested in developing software and algorithms to better understand the complex patterns of biodiversity through space and time.
After studying engineering physics at Uppsala and Umeå University, he worked as a research engineer at Icelab, Umeå University, on developing Infomap (a network clustering algorithm based on information theory) and visualization tools to simplify and highlight important structures in complex networks.
In 2016 he joined the Antonelli Lab in Gothenburg, where he worked part-time developing the Infomap Bioregions project, applying network theory to reveal the underlying geographical structure in species distributions (https://mapequation.org/bioregions). He also worked with developing a digital citizen science platform to let anyone log and share the species they see, and get help with identification.
In 2022, he successfully defended his PhD project about "Mapping incomplete relational data: networks in ecology & evolution", supervised by Martin Rosvall at the Department of Physics, Umeå University, with Alexandre Antonelli as assistant supervisor.
Jonna worked with ancient genome duplication within Malvaceae.
Jonna finished a PhD under the supervision of Alexandre Antonelli and Bernard Pfeil at BioEnv. Her work involves estimating the phylogeny, biogeographic history and divergence times of hybrid plants. She employs sequence-capture methods which she first developed for Medicago (Fabaceae), but now focused on the pantropical genus Pavonia and the genus Hibiscus (Malvaceae).
Harith completed his postdoctoral research on developing metrics to rank areas in terms of biodiversity. He manages a project to re-find species not seen in decades and thought to be extinct, and is now based at the University of Copenhagen.
Harith Morgadinho Farooq is a former postdoctoral researcher in the department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg, where he used species extinction risk and phylogenetic diversity to map and rank important areas for biodiversity conservation. He is also interested in sampling biases and herpetology, and is managing a project to try to re-find species not seen in decades and thought to be extinct (extinctorshy.org). He is now based at the University of Copenhagen.
Fernanda Calió is a botanist interested in investigating general patterns of evolution within the Neotropics, and also studying the systematics of Gentianaceae and Rubiaceae. She finished a post-doc in the Plant Systematics Lab at Universidade de São Paulo, developing her studies under the supervision of Dr. Lúcia Lohmann with collaboration of Alexandre Antonelli and his team. She is now a full Professor at Federal University of Sao Carlos in Brazil.
Alexandre was a post-doc investigating the evolution of neotropical birds.
Alexandre is an ornithologist, with extensive field experience in Brazil, mainly Amazonia. His interests lie in conservation biogeography and evolution of Neotropical birds. He received his Ph.D. degree from Heidelberg University, Germany, in 2012. He finished a post-doc with Alexandre Antonelli and Alexandre Aleixo at Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Brazil, investigating the evolutionary diversification of selected Neotropical birds occurring in open vegetation in South America. He is now a full Professor at the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco in Brazil
Ferran Sayol has a wide interest in macroecological and macroevolutionary patterns driving current diversity, mainly using birds as a study model. During his PhD in Barcelona (UAB, 2018), he focused on the evolution of behavioural flexibility and its relevance to understanding how animals cope with environmental challenges. More recently, he has become interested in addressing a major societal challenge: the recent and ongoing loss of species due to human impact on Earth. In the Antonelli Lab, he developed a project on global patterns of bird extinctions, aiming to understand how anthropogenic extinctions might be concealing original macroevolutionary patterns. Among other questions, he investigates how trait distributions might be biased by non-random extinctions and whether some macroecological patterns are better explained by past rather than current species distributions.
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Climbiê - Associate Researcher
Climbiê investigated the biogeographical and evolutionary patterns of Neotropical orchids
Climbiê Ferreira Hall is a Brazilian biologist and received his bachelor degree at the Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil, and his Master degree in Ecology and Evolution at the same University. He finished a PhD in Plant Biodiversity and Enviroment at the Instituto de Bot nica, supervised by Fábio de Barros. He has used Next Generation Sequencing and molecular phylogenies as tools to study the biogeographical and evolutionary patterns of Neotropical orchids. He focused on the subtribe Zygopetalinae producing a new phylogeny for the subtribe, specially of the Zygopetalum complex and working with species delimitation within the genus Koellensteinia.
Marcela has experience on different groups of plants. During her undergraduate studies she worked on Araliaceae (Hydrocotyle) of Brazil. Then during her MSc she became enthusiastic about the coffee family (Rubiaceae) whilst working on the Flora of Serra da Canastra - an area of the Brazilian Cerrado and Rocky Outcrops in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her current interest is in the taxonomy of Rubiaceae. She did PhD hosted at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, under the main supervision of Luiza Kinoshita, working on the Systematics and Biogeography of Manettia (Rubiaceae), and co-supervised by Alex Antonelli and Claes Persson in Gothenburg.
Lovisa carried out phylogenetic work on a genus of Brazilian orchids and estimated diversification times for the whole family Orchidaceae. She finished her PhD at Oslo's Natural History Museum.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant
- Biodiversity Genomics Research Assistant
- Genomics Research Assistant
Olivia is a biodiversity genomics research assistant based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Olivia has a background in conservation and population genetics and is currently working on a number of research projects within the group, including an orchid phylogenomics project with Oscar Pérez Escobar.
Thaís is an herpetologist, with extensive experience in Brazilian snakes. She is interested in understanding the patterns of distribution of biodiversity and how geological and climatic events have worked to shape these patterns over time.
Oskar is an evolutionary biologist and ecologist investigating biodiversity patterns.
Oskar is an evolutionary biologist and ecologist, at present based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in Switzerland. His background is in conservation biology, environmental sciences and informatics. Currently he investigates the role of past environmental conditions and eco-evolutionary feedbacks in shaping biodiversity gradients. For that, he develops macroevolutionary mechanistic models inferring biodiversity patterns from historical environmental dynamics. At the Antonelli Lab, he collaborates to investigate ways of extracting useful information from fossil records, specifically regarding age-dependent extinction processes.
Job Titles:
- Researcher in the Department of Environmental Sciences
Marie is a PhD student interested in how species distributions in the UK flora change in space and time and how genome size influences these dynamics.
Marie is a PhD student based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Queen Mary University of London, supervised by Ilia Leitch, Andrew Leitch and Alex Antonelli. She is interested in how species distributions in the UK flora change in space and time and how genome size influences these dynamics. Using historic distribution data, maps of land use change and environmental monitoring, she investigates how genome size contributes to the determination of plant species' spreads. To establish the value of genome size as a powerful ecological predictor, she makes use of the unique sampling history of the British flora in building predictive models of future plant distributions in response to ongoing changes in climate, land use and pollution.
Carina is a geologist/paleoecologist interested in the natural history of the Amazon region and its seaward extension, the Amazon Fan.
Carina is a geologist/paleoecologist and associate researcher at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) of the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and holds an MSc and PhD from this university, and an MSc in Science Communication from the Imperial College London (UK). Her main interest is the natural history of the Amazon region and its seaward extension, the Amazon Fan. Most of her work is focused on better understanding the crucial role of Andean uplift on past biodiversity, drainage reconfigurations, and the extent and effect of marine incursions in the Amazonian heartland. This is best exemplified in her Science paper, published in 2010, where the links between biodiversity patterns and mountain uplift are explained. Together with Hubert Vonhof, Carina edited a special issue on Amazonia in the Journal of South American Earth Sciences (2006) and with Frank Wesselingh edited Amazonia, landscape and species evolution: A look into the past, published by Wiley-Blackwell (2010). In the past, Carina was lecturer at the Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) and Delft Technical University (The Netherlands), and research associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK). She has also worked as technical writer for External Communications at Shell International Exploration and Production (The Netherlands). Carina regularly gives presentations, serves in academic review panels, acts as reviewer for international academic journals, and occasionally writes popular science articles.
Laura is an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, studying the phylogeny and evolution of the Neotropical Lobelioideae.
Laura did her PhD in the Davis Lab in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and is now Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University. She studies the phylogeny and evolution of the Neotropical Lobelioideae, specifically the clade comprising the genera Centropogon, Siphocampylus, and Burmeistera. In addition to taxonomy of the clade, she is interested in patterns of character evolution, particular of floral morphology in relation to pollinator shifts, and in diversification and biogeography in the context of the orogeny of the Andes.
Samuli is a curator of vascular plants in the University of Turku Herbarium (TUR), Finland. He is interested in phylogenetic systematics and tropical biodiversity. His current research is focused on fern systematics and macroevolution, with a special interest in the diversification of Neotropical species of genus Lindsaea.
Narjara has experience the taxonomy and ecology of Orchidaceae. She is particularly interested in the colonization of island environments, especially within the Neotropics. She finished her PhD at the National Museum of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), under the supervision of Dr. Ruy Alves and Dr. Sérgio Ricardo Sodré with collaboration of Alexandre Antonelli. The title of her thesis was "Phylogeny of Polystachya estrellesis (Jacq.) Garay & Sweet (Orchidaceae) and molecular evidence of colonization of the Trindad's Island".
Lova is a postdoc working on the diversity and distribution of bryophytes in the high mountains of Madagascar.
Lova is a Malagasy researcher interested in island biodiversity and tropical mountain systems. Her long-standing taxonomist interest has been in bryophytes. Bryophytes, especially liverworts, are her favourite organisms. This group remains one of the least documented components of the Malagasy rich biota. She completed her PhD at the University of Cape Town in 2018, where she investigated the regional and global context of the bryophytes of Madagascar, and the factors affecting epiphytic bryophyte diversity, distribution and assemblage of communities along an elevational gradient.
Alessandra has experience with taxonomy of Rubiaceae. She did a PhD in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), under the supervision of Dr. Ruy José Válka Alves and co-supervised by Alexandre Antonelli, working with Taxonomy, Phylogeny and Biogeography of Remijia (Rubiaceae - Cinchoneae).
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Pável - Associate Researcher
Pável is an associate researcher working on the evolution and biogeography of Neotropical butterflies.
Pável is interested in insect biogeography and systematics. He is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doc at the University of Gothenburg from 2017 to 2019. At the Antonelli Lab, he studies the phylogenetic relationships and biogeography of main Neotropical clades within the butterfly families Hesperiidae and Nymphalidae. The main goal is to better understand the ecological and evolutionary processes intervening in tropical biodiversity. He uses phylogenomic approaches, along with life-history data (larval host plants, geographical ranges) to estimate character evolution and diversification rates.
Boni is a Spanish biologist who received her MSc degree in Biodiversity and Taxonomy of plants from the University of Edinburgh (UoE)/Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE). She is currently a PhD student at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), Canada under the supervision of Julissa Roncal and co-supervised by Alex Antonelli in Gothenburg. Her studies aimed at elucidating biogeographic patterns in the geological and ecological complex region of the Caribbean using phylogenies, to understand the endemic flora assembly of the region. As a case study she looked at the systematics and biogeography of a Podocarpus lineage.
Myriam Ramírez was an associated PhD student based at the University of La Serena, Chile. Her thesis focused on the macroevolutionary patterns of Neotropical parrots.
Myriam Ramírez is interested in the ecology and evolution of birds, focused on understanding the evolutionary origin of certain traits and behaviors. She finished her PhD at the University of La Serena, Chile. Her research focuses on understanding how several environmental and geological changes that occurred in South America have affected macroevolutionary patterns of Neotropical parrots. She did an internship in the Antonelli Lab under the supervision of Alexandre Antonelli, where she carried out different analyses of diversification, trait evolution, and niche evolution on Neotropical parrots. At the same time, she workes with several research projects in ecology that assess endemic parrots in Chile.
Beatriz was a post-doc working on the evolution of Vriesea bromeliads in association with their pollinators. She aimed at reconstructing the phylogeny of the genus using RAD-seq data, to investigate shifts among hummingbird and bat pollination syndromes and test its correlation with habit and habitat type. She did her PhD at the Museu Nacional-Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) on systematics, taxonomy, and morphology of Vriesea.
Nicolas Chazot is working on macroevolutionary patterns of species, and phenotypic and ecological niche diversification. His work at the University of Gothenburg focused primarily on three projects: (1) investigating the relationship between the pattern of ecological niche evolution across European butterflies and species' responses to global changes; (2) understanding the rise and fall of the Neotropical Mauritiinae palm trees associated with the ecological turnover in Amazonia during the Miocene using the fossil record and molecular phylogenies; and (3) investigating the macroevolutionary pattern of species and phenotypic diversification of the most diverse family of butterflies, the Nymphalidae.
Ian is a quantitative ecologist who works on developing efficient statistical and modelling tools for predicting the distribution of species, species dispersal, and the impacts of climate change.
Ian is a quantitative ecologist with 5 years of experience in research fields related to biogeography, forest ecology, movement ecology and surface hydrology. As a research assistant in French research institutions and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Ian has worked on modelling the dispersal and migration of wild populations; estimating and mapping the impact of climate change on the decline of species populations; and developing efficient, statistical, modelling and mapping tools for predicting the distribution of species. Ian has a master's degree in Biostatistics & Modelling
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Director of the Lund University Botanical Garden
Allison is the Director of the Lund University Botanical Garden. She was previously the Project Manager for the Antonelli Lab and the Director of the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre.
Allison is the Director of the Lund University Botanical Garden. She was previously the Project Manager for the Antonelli Lab (2017-2022) and the Director of the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre (2020-2022). She studied ecology (BSc, 2008) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and protist systematics (PhD, 2013) at Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden. She then worked as a visiting researcher in tree fern systematics and biogeography, also at Uppsala University. In 2015 she started Forest Cat Editing, which works with academic editing and communication. While operating her company as a "digital nomad" from nearly two dozen countries, Allison further developed her interest in scientific communication and outreach. This eventually led her back to Gothenburg to work with the Antonelli Lab and to help start the new biodiversity centre. She co-edited the book Mountains, Climate and Biodiversity with Alexandre Antonelli and Carina Hoorn (Wiley, 2018), and has authored a number of scientific and popular science articles. Her main expertise is in scientific management and leadership, as well as communication and outreach on biodiversity and conservation. Allison is an avid traveler and adventurer, hiker, SCUBA diver, mushroom connoisseur, fossil hunter and all-around nerd.
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Research Leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens
Oscar is Research Leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, working on orchid phylogenomics and evolution. His main research interests are centred towards understanding the macroevolutionary dynamics of Neotropical orchids.
Maria do Céo Rodrigues Pessoa was a PhD student at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, under the supervision of Maria Regina Barbosa, and co-supervised by Alex Antonelli and Claes Persson at the University of Gothenburg. She was also a biologist at the Lauro Pires Xavier Herbarium (JPB), at the Federal University of Paraiba in Brazil. The purpose of her doctoral project was to perform a molecular phylogenetic study of the genus Chomelia Jacq. (Rubiaceae) and a taxonomic study of the Brazilian species.
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Gislaine a. - Associate Researcher
Gislaine studies the evolutionary processes of rare and endangered cacti in Serra do Espinhaço to establish conservation strategies.
Gislaine's main interest is related to the evolution of natural populations of plants in dry areas. In her PhD (supervised by Maura Manfrin at the University of São Paulo in collaboration with Alexandre Antonelli), she worked with the impact of Pleistocene climate change on the population dynamics of a South Brazil cacti species. Currently, she is a post-doc at the University of São Carlos supervised by Evandro Moraes, mainly focusing on the evolutionary process of naturally distributed populations of rare and endangered cacti in Serra do Espinhaço (rocky savanna) to establish their conservation strategies as a part of the National Plan of Action for the Conservation of Cacti of Brazil (PAN Cactaceae).
Fernanda has experience in different groups of Brazilian Asteraceae. During her MSc studies she worked on the taxonomy of Vernonieae - Sipolisiinae. Her current interest is in the taxonomy of Senecioneae. She did her PhD hosted at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, under the main supervision of João Aguiar Nogueira Batista, working on the Systematics and Taxonomy of Senecio (Asteraceae), co-supervised by Alex Antonelli in Gothenburg.
Daniele is a computational biologist interested in macroevolutionary processes. He develops Bayesian models to estimate speciation, extinction, and migration rates from both molecular phylogenies and fossil occurrence data. His research was formerly funded by the Swedish Research Council (2015-04748). Now he is associated with the Department of Biology at University of Fribourg.
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Professor at Universidad Nacional
Marcelo is a professor at Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia 'San Juan Bosco' and studies the macroevolutionary origins of Platyrrhines.
Marcelo received his PhD at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, and is now a researcher of the Argentine National Council for Scientific and Technologic Research (CONICET) and Professor at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco." His work has focused on the evolution of platyrrhine primates, with emphasis on systematics, phylogeny, paleobiogeography and paleoenvironments. Among other projects, he is involved in the study of Paleogene mammals from Patagonia with the description of a diverse mammal assemblage. He is currently working on platyrrhine origins and their early evolutionary radiation. Between November 2016 and August 2017 he was a Guest Professor at the Antonelli lab. During his time here, one of the major objectives was to assess the role of Patagonian fossil platyrrhines in the evolution of the extant groups, using a paleobiogeographic scenario and inferring geographic evolution under Bayesian and phylogenetic methods.
Weston is a postdoc in the Antonelli Lab who is interested in broad-scale patterns of plant diversity, especially in the Neotropics. His current research focuses on integrating collections-based data and modeling approaches to better understand extinction risks of vascular plants in the Caribbean.
Weston is a postdoc in the Antonelli Lab at the University of Gothenburg interested in understanding the processes underlying patterns of plant diversity at regional and global scales. His current research focuses on understanding how habitat loss is impacting species distributions and driving extinction amongst the vascular plant flora on the island of Hispaniola. Previously, Weston was a postdoc at the University of Florida, where he worked on developing phylogenomic methods and generating target-capture sequence data for studying the early evolution of land plants. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Vermont in 2018, where his dissertation focused on the evolution of the clubmosses (Lycopodiaceae), especially the group's rapid radiation in the tropical Andes.
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Maria Fernanda - Associate Researcher
Maria Fernanda ('Mafe') was a postdoctoral researcher in the Antonelli Lab working on the Amazonian palm Geonoma. Now she is a senior researcher at Vilnius University focusing on evolution and conservation genomics
Mafe is interested in phylogeography and biodiversity in the Neotropics, mainly involving ant-plant mutualisms as her subject of study. She was a postdoc at the University of Gothenburg working with the Amazonian palm Geonoma. By studying the genetic and ecological differences between morphotypes of Geonoma macrostachys, she aims to understand the mechanisms behind ecological speciation in plants. She is interested in using NGS data to infer plants' evolutionary histories at the population and species levels. She is currently a senior researcher at Vilnius University where she is focusing on conservation genomics.
Jakub is working on algorithms for large-scale phylogenetic reconstruction. He is also interested in applying machine learning to problems in genomics and biodiversity. His background is in algorithms, phylogenetics and machine learning.
Mats was a collaborator with a particular focus on bioinformatics.
Mats defended his thesis entitled "Phylogenetic and Phyloclimatic Inference of the Evolution of Potentilleae (Rosaceae)" at the University of Gothenburg in 2010. He then did a post-doc at Paul Jarvis Lab, University of Leicester, where he investigated the origin and evolution of chloroplasts. He acted as aa bioinformatician at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and regularly collaborated with our group on bioinformatic projects. He left the group to pursue his own research and set-up his group to study genome evolution.
Francisco was a research assistant working on the phylogenetics of neotropical plants.
Francisco did his Masters in Ecology, Evolution and Systematics at the LMU in Munich, Germany. Francisco is broadly interested in evolutionary biology and his main interests lay in phylogeography, population genetics, and behavioral ecology. Francisco is a research assistant in the Antonelli lab in Santander, Colombia and is working on DNA sequencing, phylogenetic community structure, and diversification rates of neotropical palms. Francisco is also collaborating with other projects addressing the evolution of neotropical mammals from the Caviidae family in South America.
Job Titles:
- Associate Researcher
- Research Team Leader for the World Forest ID Programme at the Royal Botanic Gardens
Victor Deklerck is the Research Team Leader for the World Forest ID Programme at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Victor leads the World Forest ID research team on assessing new timber forensic techniques as well as optimizing and combining existing techniques using AI.