Bernardo's research focuses on landscape connectivity and its role in evolution and biodiversity conservation. Since October 2024, he has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Biology at CML, using tools from ecological niche modelling and landscape genetics to understand how landscape features influence population connectivity and hybridization between native and invasive species.

More information about Bernardo Antunes

Professional experience

Bernardo obtained his master's degree in Biodiversity, Genetics and Evolution from the Faculty of Science at the University of Porto, Portugal, in 2017. In his master's thesis he studied patterns of gene flow and habitat connectivity among three endemic subspecies of Salamandra salamandra from southern Iberia. Then he followed to an internship (Erasmus+) at the National Museum of Natural History (MNCN), CSIC, Madrid, Spain, where he studied the environmental drivers of genetic differentiation in two S. salamandra subspecies from mountain regions of central Iberia. He then obtained his PhD in Biology at the Institute of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. There he studied patterns of population and habitat connectivity in two closely related but ecologically distinct newts, Lissotriton vulgaris and L. montandoni. This was done using genomic data, with a particular focus on how such patterns vary between species and across regions. He was then awarded a NAWA Bekker Research Fellowship to work at the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE) in Montpellier, France, where he investigated how recent landscape changes have affected both population connectivity and hybridization in L. vulgaris and L. montandoni.

Research Topic

Currently, Bernardo is a postdoctoral researcher on Kat Stewart's project "Pushing the frontier of hybridization: unlocking hidden eco-evo dynamics through Environmental DNA (eDNA)", where he is using tools from ecological niche modelling and landscape genetics to understand how landscape features shape the invasion trajectory of the Italian crested newt, Triturus carnifex, and its contact and hybridization with the native northern crested newt, T. cristatus. This knowledge will be used to formulate more effective management strategies that mitigate unwanted hybridization.