My study interest
My research focuses on the study of ecological communities through molecular taxonomy approaches. I am particularly interested by barcoding and metabarcoding approaches to first identify species and communities, and then characterise their evolution and interaction with the environment. I am very enthusiastic to develop bioinformatic pipelines to improve reproducibility and make molecular tools accessible to a larger number of researchers.
My PhD work
My Ph.D. work focuses on the diversity of the coral reef cryptobiome and its spatio-temporal patterns in the Mascarene Islands (Reunion and Rodrigues). For this, I use artificial micro-reefs (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure, ARMS) as a standardised sampling method which mimic the reef framework complexity. With the support of molecular taxonomy approaches, I investigate this cryptic reef biodiversity, aiming to understand the factors shaping the colonisation and distribution of this understudied community. This work highlights the uniqueness of Mascarenes’ cryptobiome and the need to develop regional barcode databases to improve knowledge and ecological interpretations in light of global changes. In addition, I use species delineation and phylogeography to investigate colonisation patterns of cryptobenthic species at larger scales.