PhD student
I am an ecologist and zoologist interested in understanding how anthropogenic factors such as climate change, habitat degradation, and invasive species affect biodiversity from the local to the global scale. After a herpetological master thesis in which I studied the drivers of colonization dynamics of amphibian populations in northern Italy, I jumped from ponds to glacial and periglacial environments. Currently, my main research topic focuses on understanding the development of biotic communities after glacier retreat by combining environmental DNA metabarcoding data with a trait-based approach to infer functional diversity measures and reconstruct food webs. My ultimate goal is to predict how high-altitude/-latitude ecosystems will evolve in a deglaciated world, anticipating the ecological impacts of climate change on these fragile and fascinating environments. Aside from scientific research, I love hiking and travelling to explore the immense variety of habitats that blanket our planet.