Mariana Marques
PhD Student
I am currently a PhD student at CIBIO‐InBIO, working on the comparative phylogeography, diversity and conservation of Southwestern African Inselbergs, using the Angolan and Namibian herpetofauna as models.
While undergraduate student, I started to participate in ongoing projects focused both on natural history collections and African herpetology which shaped my early academic path since the beginning and provided me tools, skills and experience that greatly contribute to my scientific development.
Since 2013 I’ve participated in several field expedition to São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola, where I have learned how to collect, preserve and fix herpetological specimens, and during my Msc thesis I dedicated myself to the study of the diversity and distribution Angolan herpetofauna, where I also developed expertise in taxonomy and nomenclature.
During the last 2 years I was an active collaborator in the Herpetological collection at Museu Nacional de História e Da Ciência, Universidade de Lisboa (MUNHAC) where I had the opportunity to conduct my research, contributed to the enrichment of its collections. During that period I have also managed, revised and georeferenced the collection.
My PhD project aims to increase our knowledge on the adaptation and evolutionary processes that act on Southwestern African Inselbergs, but will also provide important and new possibilities to establish comparisons between the natural history and ecology of African Inselbergs in general.
