Fitxa persona

. My research concerns the evolutionary history and ecology of marine parasites. Since no ecological community can be characterized if its species composition is not fully known, I am also interested in the taxonomy and phylogeny of these organisms. Much of our efforts have concentrated on Ligophorus, a genus of monogeneans occurring on the gills of mullets. Some of our latest studies have applied geometric morphometrics to improve our understanding of the drivers of phenotypic variation in the attachment organs of these parasites. Cophylogenetic studies also represent a large portion of our current efforts. Cophylogeny focuses on species associations (organisms tracking organisms, such as parasites and hosts or pollinators and flowering plants), molecular systematics (organisms or genes tracking genes) and historical biogeography (organisms tracking areas). We have developed PACo, a method for cophylogenetic analysis based on Procrustes fitting of the parasite phylogeny onto the host phylogeny, which can be applied to a wide variety of settings. Indeed, we have recently shown its usefulness to asses divergent evolution between nuclear and organelle sequences.