Vera Lúcia Martins Nunes

I received a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Lisbon in 2012 and I am currently working in the Evolutionary Genetics group of CE3C as a post-doctoral researcher. My research focuses mainly on phylogeography, population genomics, adaptation and speciation in natural populations. I have worked with a variety of Mediterranean species as models, investigating their patterns of genetic diversity. For my PhD project, I searched for genomic signatures of selection in ocellated lizards and looked at the genetic basis of their colour polymorphism. Then I joined the team of Prof. Paula Simões to study several small-sized species of Iberian Cicadas, mainly from genus Tettigettalna. Our work was naturally extended to the poorly known cicadofauna from Morocco, where we have discovered and described in 2017 the first African species for genus Tettigettalna, along with another new species for the new genus Berberigetta. 

Currently I am using genomic data to infer the evolutionary history of a seabird species complex from the Macaronesia islands, which is comprised of taxa that breed asynchronously. Additionally, diet analysis of each species should be assessed from metabarcoding sequencing from faeces to investigate if habitat specialization is contributing to genetic divergence through local adaptation.