Glad to announce that the most recent update of the IUCN “Global Status of Sharks, Rays and Chimaeras” volume is available at the IUCN website.

This compilation is a major effort of many authorities around the world on the most up-to-date trends and conservation status for major groups of elasmobranchs across the globe.

Not only this volume includes a break down per areas around the globe, but also for particular groups of interest.

I am proud to be part of this initiative with many inspiring collaborators. We have published the chapter “river jewels” regarding the diversity, ecology and conservation status of the Neotropical freshwater stingrays (Potamotrygoninae).

You can find this chapter (and all the other ones for this volume) here!

Our datapaper of genomic data of eastern Spruce Budworm is finally out at Ecology!

We published a dataset of almost 2000 genotyped individuals of eastern Spruce Budworm (SBW) (Choristoneura fumiferana) sampled during the development of a population outbreak that is inferred to have started in Quebéc/Canada in 2006.

This study comprises the great work of collagues and collaborators led by Dr. Patrick James. We provide genotyped data of sampling efforts across temporal and spatial scales close to the epicentre of a SBW outbreak. The eastern Spruce Budworm is a native lepidopteran (a moth!) from boreal and sub-boreal forests in North America that present natural irruptive outbreak cycles throughout their natural range.

The magnitude of these outbreaks is impressive, and result in multi-million dollar initiatives to mitigate and manage the socioeconomic impacts related to the defoliation that result from these outbreaks. Read more here and here.

In this paper, we provide characterized genotypes for individuals from different locations across the outbreak, in different sampling years. This is a fundamental contribution to conservation biology, management and ecological studies as it provides diversity standard that can aid the future studies and initiatives based on genomic information.

Documenting and investigating genetic variability in systems like this is important due to their complicated demographic variation patterns, that can quickly shuffle genetic diversity and structure from one generation to the other, across and between localities.

I am excited to share this research and contribute to the use of genetic information towards understanding these fascinating systems!

You can find the PDF and data for download here!

To cap the month of July, our publication in the Global and Planetary Change journal came out!

This great study lead my my colleague and co-author Dr. James Albert uses empirical data from fish distribution allied with geological data from the literature, as well as other distribution data from different organisms in the Amazon, to discuss how Late Neogene river captures are responsible for the distribution patterns we see today.

We discuss how these geological events and the modern channelization of the Amazon and Orinoco have impacted in the distribution patterns seen today.

It was a great experience and I am honored to be part of this great contribution to the field, published in this excellent special volume organized by Dr. Carina Hoorn

Find the PDF for download here!

I was very delighted to participate in the 2021 Joint Meeting of Ichthyology and Herpetology (JMIH) organized by the American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology (ASIH) this past week. Unfortunately I was not able to attend it in person this year, but had the opportunity to present our research on the phylogenics of Potamotrygoninae virtually. It is always a great meeting, and I am very happy that I could share results of my research with so many friends and colleages.

Not only that, I had the honor of being part of two other great studies presented at the same meeting. Victor de Britto (Twitter) presented his brilliant study on body size correlations to habitat transitions between marine and freshwater environments; and Taegan Perez(Twitter) gave a really nice talk in her first JMIH about the importance of integrative approaches in biological surveys and conservation implications in Costa Rica.

We have just published the most complete molecular phylogeny for the subfamily Potamotrygoninae in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Our research highlights the taxonomic difficulties of the Neotropical freshwater stingrays, and we discuss the incongruencies between morphology and molecular taxonomy and systematics of this group.

We identify instances of cryptic diversity, possible morphological converge and molecular introgression between lineages of Potamotrygon.

Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings from a conservation perspective.

You can download the PDF here!

Journal of Biogeography has written an Early Career Researcher (ECR) feature on our work about the evolution and biogeography of the Neotropical freshwater stingrays that has been published in the same journal. I talk a bit about the research, the process behind it, motivation and hypotheses, as well as future goals for this and other lines of study.

Check the original post here!

I had the opportunity to discuss a bit about how the interpretation of phenotypes (the physical manifestation of genetic information) is very important in studies using genomic data at the II SBE Meeting. I participated in the “Phenotype still matters in the genomic era” symposium among fantastic and diverse colleagues and research. Can’t wait for next year’s meeting!

Link for the talk will be available soon.

The New Scientist wrote a great article about our paper on the origin, diversification and biogeography of the Neotropical Freshwater Stingrays, recently published in the Journal of Biogeography.

Check it out!