2008-2011
FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Profile
My current research interests include biogeography, macroecology, distribution modelling, phylogeography, biodiversity patterns, and conservation. I have worked mainly on mammals and amphibians, but also on birds, reptiles, insects and other invertebrates, and occasionally on plants. I’m particularly interested in integrating different scientific fields in multidisciplinary approaches and in developing and applying innovative methodologies, or adapting those traditionally used in other fields.
As an undergrad student at Porto University (Portugal) I did field and lab work on otter (Lutra lutra) local distribution and feeding ecology in different parts of its Portuguese range. For my graduation thesis I did an internship at the Biogeography, Diversity and Conservation lab of the University of Málaga (Spain), to set up a Geographic Information System and model the larger-scale distribution of this species in the Iberian Peninsula. I was then hired by the Spanish Society for the Study and Conservation of Mammals (SECEM) to do biogeographic analyses of all species included the Spanish mammal atlas. I proceeded to do my PhD Thesis, as an FCT fellow, on biogeographic relationships between predators, prey and parasites in the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on a few mammal and helminth species and including comparative phylogeographic analyses. Afterwards, I was hired by the University of Extremadura in Cáceres (Spain) to work on red deer (Cervus elaphus) phylogeography and spatial ecology. My current work as a post-doctoral fellow is co-hosted by Imperial College London (UK) and the University of Évora (Portugal) and addresses wide-scale distribution patterns of vertebrates in the Mediterranean Basin. I am looking for particular distribution patterns (chorotypes) shared among otherwise apparently unrelated species, and investigating whether their causes are mainly historical or ecological, with applications for conservation under global change.
Selected publications
Real, R., A.M., Barbosa, A., Rodríguez, F.J., García, J.M., Vargas, L.J., Palomo & M. Delibes, in press. Conservation biogeography of ecologically-interacting species: the case of the Iberian lynx and the European rabbit. Diversity and Distributions, early view. doi: 10.1111/j.1472- 4642.2008.00546.x
Barbosa, A.M., R. Real & J.M. Vargas, 2009. Transferability of environmental favourability models in geographic space: the case of the Iberian desman (Galemys pyrenaicus) in Portugal and Spain. Ecological Modelling, 220: 747-754.
Real, R., A.M. Barbosa & J.M. Vargas, 2006. Obtaining environmental favourability functions from logistic regression. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 13: 237-245
Real, R., A.M. Barbosa, I. Martínez-Solano & M. García-París, 2005. Distinguishing the distributions of two cryptic frogs (Anura: Discoglossidae) using molecular data and environmental modeling. Canadian Journal of Zoology 83(4): 536-545.
Barbosa, A.M., R. Real, J. Olivero & J.M. Vargas, 2003. Otter (Lutra lutra) distribution modelling at two resolution scales suited to conservation planning in the Iberian Peninsula. Biological Conse
