Mafalda Cotrim Roberto Barata

Science is my main interest but genetics always amazed me so I begin to study the influence of past climate change on the present distribution of the populations using genetics as a tool, but I also intent to enlarge my knowledge to other different tools.

Currently I’m finishing my master theses in Phylogeny and Phylogeography of some lizards from Morocco and soon I will start my PhD where I will investigate the evolutionary patterns in endemic reptiles from various mountain systems in North and East Africa. Island systems have dominated evolutionary studies since the time of Darwin, due to their simplicity as discrete units. Montane systems are similar, with high levels of endemisms and reduced gene flow between isolated habitats. However, they offer the additional advantage of allowing prediction of changes to levels of isolation with environmental, especially climatic, change. We intend to assess levels of endemisms and genetic variability within various African montane reptile species. This genetic component will be combined with modelling techniques to predict historic ranges, and possible future ranges under various changing environmental scenarios. Africa is one of the most interacting places to do this work because of their species richness and relatively ensample places