RESEARCH TOPICS
Biodiversity of marine invertebrate organisms
My recent work has provided me with an exceptional opportunity to update the records of distribution of more than two hundred algae and animal macrospecies that inhabit the rocky shores of European and North African Atlantic coasts. Data provide an important high resolution baseline agaist which future changes in species distributions can be measured.

Measuring the environment
I have tackled this issue from local to continental scales and gained experience in working with satellite and in situ data, which yield distinct but complementary results.
I have worked in a blue shark (Prionace glauca) tagging program, where we used remote sensed data to show that for this species north-south migrations are related to seasonal sea surface temperature (SST) variation in the north-east Atlantic.
Recently, in collaboration with researchers from the University of South Carolina, I have reconstructed the monthly coastal SST from 1900 to 2007 for the European and both US coasts, using in situ, ship-of-opportunity data. Results are now being used to determine regional and seasonal temperature patterns off these three coastlines. Additionally, they offer valuable information on long-term warming processes and on their variation at this vast scale. These data are of fundamental importance not only to correlate with current changes in species distributions, but also to use as input in multiple bioclimatic models and hindcast studies.
We have also been using the blue mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis) as a model species to study sub-lethal stress quantified as Heath Shock Protein (HSP) expression between cold and hot microsites at several locations along the US East coast. Our results suggest that in addition to the latitudinal cline in thermal stress, there is a significant influence of the micro-topography on the thermal regime at which the animals are daily exposed.

Analysis of multispecies distributional limits
Regions of abrupt environmental clines frequently limit the occurrence of different species causing the collapse of several distribution limits to a narrow geographic area. This means that temporal changes on community boundary locations may be used both as indicators of environmental change and to track impacts of global warming.
I have developed an analytical method to objectively define biogeographic discontinuities along a linear transect (like a coastline) for a high number of species. The main feature in this new technique is its ability to work with unevenly distributed data, which can be particularly useful for studying ecological communities from patchy habitats (such as the rocky shores). It is also suitable to deal with data from several surveys made in the same general area but with small-scale differences in sample locations, which is very useful to compare historical with contemporary data, assessing the influence of climate change on species’ distribution.

Effects of climate change on species interactions/distributions
In collaboration with various researchers at CIBIO (University of Porto, Portugal) I have identified several species as sensitive indicators of climate change. We have shown that many are currently shifting their ranges towards the north, most likely driven by the recent increase in temperature and associated changes in coastal sea circulation. However, contrarily to what would be expected, the ranges of many other species are not changing at the same rate and/or in the same direction. These results are extremely relevant since they illustrate that generalizations about poleward shifts should not be taken lightly. Even species that are apparently responding to climate warming revealed complex, non-linear interactions with third-party factors like habitat availability or other organisms.

Modelling species distributions
In partnership with researchers from the University of Porto (Portugal) I have already successfully developed bioclimatic envelope models to study changes in the distribution of intertidal species. We have shown that this kind of models can be of great utility in gaining insights into the nature of the relationship between the distribution of the species and the environment.
I am also involved in the work being developed at the University of South Carolina to hindcast intertidal species distributions at centennial time scales, using population genetics to validate the models. We are currently using the genus Mytilus as target species, but other will probably be studied in the near future.