Mónica Carneiro da Silva

Researcher

Seabirds Phylogeography Population Genomics Molecular Ecology Metabarcoding

I received a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) in 2004 and I am currently a researcher in the Behavioural Ecology and Conservation group of CE3C. My research focuses on molecular ecology, population genetics and molecular evolution of multi-gene families. For many years my work has been centered in the fields of molecular ecology, population genetics and molecular evolution, and my research using as model system mainly pelagic seabirds.

My current research is driven by three overarching objectives:

1) Investigate the evolutionary mechanisms driving population divergence and speciation of highly mobile, but philopatric, marine taxa, using neutral and adaptive markers;
2) Characterize mechanisms underlying evolution of multigene families (such as the Major Histocompatibility Complex and Olfactory receptor genes) in seabirds using Next Generation Sequencing, and investigate the evolutionary dynamics of the isolated genes, namely how diversity is maintained and diversifies.
3) More recently, I am interested in characterizing niche divergence (using spatial ecology and diet metabarcoding approaches) in closely related species and identifying environmental-based selection pressures that may explain patterns of population and species divergence driven by local adaptation.