Research Interests

I have developed a great interest in a variety of fields including population genomics, paleogenetics, evolution, adaptation and introgression. I aim to understand how past and current animal populations responded to challenges like isolation, climate change and human pressures through the use of molecular and bioinformatic tools.

I recently deposited my PhD dissertation, "The wolf and the desert: genomics and molecular ecology of the African golden wolf”, supervised by Jennifer Leonard and funded by a Severo Ochoa contract from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Industry. The thesis has three focuses. First, to evaluate the ecological role of African golden wolves (AGWs) within a Saharan carnivore assemblage using fecal DNA. Second, to evaluate changes in AGW populations with regard to Pleistocene climate change and increasing human population using genomics. And third, to detect adaptation to hot and arid environments in whole genome data from AGWs.
During my thesis I engaged in optimization of DNA extraction protocols for highly UV-radiated noninvasive samples, writing custom bash scripts to work with low and medium coverage genomes, and implementing novel bioinformatic tools with polynomial regressions to date population divergences.

Before the PhD I had the opportunity to become engaged in a variety of studies, which can be summarized along the following lines:

- Study of ancient horse DNA from the 320-kyr-old Schöningen and 80-kyr-old Fetzershaldenhöhle archeological sites, Germany (MSc project, unpublished), under the supervision of Johannes Krause and Nicholas Conard (Max Planck Institut of the Sciences of Human History in Jena and University of Tübingen, Germany). In this project I worked with edgecutting techniques of ancient DNA extraction, genomic library preparation, bioinformatic preprocessing and phylogenetic analyses.

- Assessment of immune system changes and allocation of CD4+/CD8+ T cells during sleep phases in humans, rats and mice. Under the supervision of Luciana Besedovsky at the Jan Born lab, Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN), Tübingen.

- Reconstruction of a trophic network from between 100 and 20 kyr ago in the caves of Goyet and Scladina (Belgium) using paleoisotopes, under the supervision of Hervé Bocherens, University of Tübingen.

Aside from these projects, I engage myself actively in scientific outreach for non-specialized public, as well as biological fieldwork in Sahara desert and archeological excavations in Spain, Germany and Italy.

Publications

Peer-reviewed Articles