About me
I was born and raised in Recife, Brazil. I could therefore never escape (and in fact I did not want to!) the full majesty of life in the tropics. It is everywhere you look, and everywhere you go. I was particularly obsessed with the leaf-cutter ants that created mighty civilizations in my front yard – to my mother’s absolute dismay, since it meant her much cared-for garden’s days were numbered. After a high school exchange trip to Nova Scotia, Canada, and a subsequent scholarship to Dalhousie University, I moved to Canada in 2012 to pursue a BSc in Agriculture with a major in Environmental Sciences.
During my time at Dalhousie University, I got involved in Dr. Chris Cutler’s entomology laboratory. In my first year, I became a volunteer research assistant, and was then hired as a summer research assistant every summer until I started my Masters. During my MSc, also under Dr. Cutler’s supervision, I was finally in charge of a large-scale project, and it was at that time that I fell in love with statistics. I went from having a self-declared dislike for the subject, to wanting to learn about it more and more, to literally “spreading the good news” to my friends. I quickly became the “stats guy” for my lab and I have maintained this reputation ever since. Aside from stats, I got to learn a lot about ecology, community ecology, and the Carabidae fauna found in lowbush blueberry fields. But as I said earlier, my “gateway drug” into biology was ants, so I went looking for some kind of ant project for my PhD.
It was thus that I came across Dr. Alex Smith on my Google searches for ant researchers in Canada. I promptly sent him an email explaining just how much I love ants and how I would love to work with him. After some email exchanges and video calls, I started my PhD at the University of Guelph under Dr. Smith’s supervision. He somehow convinced me to work with beetles again (rove beetles this time) instead of ants and I was Costa Rica bound, as all of my field work was going to happen there. However, once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, all field trips were cancelled for the foreseeable future. I therefore needed to re-design some of my work, which meant that I was now going to do field work at local woods in Guelph and, wouldn’t you know it, that meant that I was finally going to work with ants!
In my PhD work (which is ongoing), I’m learning more about how abiotic variables (temperature, humidity, and elevation) and corresponding physiological traits for ants and beetles (thermal tolerance and cuticular hydrocarbons) explain (or not!) their community distribution in space.