CIBIO-InBIO at ISA develops research in the following core areas:

Infrastructure Ecology

Integrating wildlife conservation with energy and transport infrastructure development. Evaluate the mechanisms underlying the patterns and processes of the negative effects of infrastructures on wildlife; Assess and monitor mitigation and compensation measures across infrastructures; Bridge science with best practices in infrastructure development.

Aquatic Genetics and Physiology

Understanding aquatic biodiversity, evolution, ecology, physiology and behavior. Strong focus in investigating the role of the host's microbiome in health and disease states, as well as the role of immunogenetics and sociality in shaping microbiota diversity and composition, and the role of neuroendocrinology in modulating animal social response

Biodiversity in Agricultural and Forest Ecosystems

Analysis of the impacts of management and policies (the Common Agricultural Policy in particular) on biodiversity and ecosystem services of agricultural and forest systems; Impacts of global change on farmland biodiversity; Forest restoration; Fire ecology

Applied Ecology

Conservation biology; impact assessment and mitigation; sustainable use of biological resources; developing cost-effective tools for monitoring biodiversity.

Theoretical Ecology and Biodiversity Modelling

Dynamics of biodiversity change and its consequences for ecosystem services using a combination of theoretical and empirical approaches; Environmental assessments of the condition of biodiversity and ecosystem services from the local to the global scale.

Global Ecological Challenges under Socio-Environmental Change

Global ecological challenges, such as biological invasions, extinctions and changes to the biogeography of terrestrial vertebrates using socio-economic and geopolitical perspectives.

 

Research Applications

With research applications mostly in:

  • Restoration of ecosystems
  • Cost-effective biodiversity monitoring
  • Conceptual framework to solve practical problems in ecosystem management, conservation biology, impact assessment and mitigation, and the sustainable use of biological resources
  • Impacts of powerlines and roads on biodiversity
  • Development of spatially-explicit models for population viability analysis in fragmented landscapes
  • Development of global and regional monitoring schemes to improve our understanding of biodiversity and ecosystem services change
  • Environmental assessments of the condition of biodiversity and ecosystem services from the local to the global scale
  • Ecology of bats and their response to environmental change, management of the interaction between bat populations and human activities, and evaluation and promotion of bat ecosystem services
  • Knowledge improvement on the ecology of managed agricultural and forest ecosystems: farming systems and policy impacts, global change and farmland biodiversity, forest ecology and management impacts