Ana P. Coelho

As an ecologist who specializes in birds, I thoroughly enjoy exploring all aspects related to them, from simply bird watching and bird ringing, to studying their behaviour, foraging ecology, trophic interactions and distributions. I am also passionate about community conservation and environmental education, using birds as umbrella species.

My scientific research was mostly done on tropical ecosystems, focusing on how birds respond to environmental change. During my MSc degree I explored how anthropogenic land use changes affect avian seed dispersal, in the tropical forests of São Tomé (in the Gulf of Guinea). After that I did a tropical ecology course in the rainforests of east Africa, just before going back to west Africa for my PhD in a coastal ecosystem. It specifically focused on investigating the implications of wintering in the tropics (precisely in the Bijagós archipelago) for migratory shorebirds, and exploring how their prey availability, diet and energetic balance throughout the wintering season explain the current population declines and distributions in the region. I also examined the interactions between shorebirds and people that establish in the mudflats, particularly regarding bivalve harvesting, a resource shared between both. 

I am currently working at BIODESERTS research group, with the Inventory of desert fauna of AlUla, focusing on birds.