Bio

In 2015, I obtained a Ms.C in “Forest conservation and restoration” from Tuscia University, with a thesis exploring the ecology and distribution of the fascinating Acer cappadocicum subsp. lobelii in Italy.

Between 2015 and 2016, I volunteered in a research project focused on fine-scale biodiversity patters in the Abruzzo Lazio and Molise National Park. This allowed me to discover the beauty of semi-natural dry grasslands, and led to some nice collaborations, including Cancellieri et al. 2017 and Filibeck et al. 2019a,b.

In 2016, I joined Prof. Alicia Acosta’s lab at Roma Tre University, and I came across what would turn into the main focus of my research: temporal vegetation patterns. For my thesis, I used different approaches to provide an assessment of recent (10-15 years) changes in Mediterranean coastal dune habitats. After performing a diachronic analysis of the RanvegDunes database (Sperandii et al. 2018), I carried on a resurveying study focused on herbaceous dune habitats. While a preliminary analysis performed after the first resurvey season was already hinting at important changes in species composition, the complete assessment of >330 vegetation plots revealed significant habitat loss as well as dramatic taxonomic and functional shifts, coupled with a sharp decline in Ammophila arenaria, probably the most important dune building species in the Mediterranean. Our work was pitched by a Project Editor of “Science and Environmental Policy” (a news service published by the European Commission – DG Environment): here is the piece based on it.

After obtaining my PhD (2020), I landed in 🇪🇸Valencia🇪🇸, where I joined the Functional Diversity lab at the Desertification Research Centre for a two-years postdoc. There, I worked on the analysis of the mechanisms regulating temporal stability in plant and arthropod communities, with a particular focus on the role of functional traits. Besides, I took part to the Red Bioclima project, participating to the vegetation sampling of a network of permanent plots located in natural parks of the Valencian Region.

Since October 2022, I am an ERA Postdoctoral Fellow in the Vegetation Science Group at Masaryk University. With my EU-funded project VegTrends, supervised by Prof. Milan Chytrý, I am using the recently-assembled ResurveyEurope database to produce the first comprehensive and representative report of temporal trends in the vegetation of European open habitats.