HUNTING THE MOLECULAR PAST

Paula Campos, will give a seminar entitled " Hunting the Molecular Past” on 2th of December, at 14.30, in Campus Agrário de Vairão auditorium.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) provides a new way to address evolutionary questions by retrieving genetic information from preserved remains of plants and animals up to around 800,000 years old, providing answers that were previously inaccessible.
The observation of evolutionary processes within populations over geologically significant time scales is one of the questions that has been addressed by aDNA. As it allows evolutionary processes to be recorded in real time, it presents a unique means to test hypothesis of molecular evolution, population genetics and paleoecology. At the same time, the recovery of DNA from other extinct species enables the inference of their phylogenetic placement and taxonomic position and provides estimates of speciation dates.

Dr Paula Campos is currently the Curator of Zoology in The Science Museum, University of Coimbra and an Associate Researcher at the Centre of Excellence in GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark. She is interested in megafauna population dynamics in the late Pleistocene and Holocene, past environmental reconstructions, and early human migrations into the New World.

Right after, José Manuel Grosso-Silva will present the Student Seminar on "Systematics and biogeography of the genus Rhagonycha (Coleoptera, Cantharidae) in the Iberian Peninsula". José Manuel is a PhD student supervised by Rubim Almeida da Silva and Miguel Ángel Alonso-Zarazaga.