XXXVIII CICLO | Gentile Giulia

I’m Ph.D. student in “Ecology and sustainable management of environmental resources” course, with a keen interest in evolutionary biology. My research focuses on population genetics, and I’m transitioning towards a genomic approach. I really like fieldwork, but I also find laboratory work and data analysis fascinating. My goal is to understand the genetic mechanisms underlying evolutionary processes and their implications for conservation and adaptation of biodiversity.

The discipline of landscape genetics combines spatial statistical analysis, population genetics, and landscape ecological methods with the aim of studying the landscape connectivity of organisms in the context of habitat fragmentation (Holderegger and Wagner 2008). 

Different studies have investigated the landscape genetics of wildlife populations within protected areas, but most of these studies did not consider the variations in management practices within the same area (eg. Connor et al., 2021; Maier et al., 2022; Azevedo-Silva et al., 2023). Even though some authors suggest that a landscape genomics approach has a huge potential for applied management and conservation, it has not yet been utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of zoning designations in protected areas. This project aims to use landscape genomics techniques to assess the effectiveness of protected areas.