Profile

I currently live in a small village near Norwich with my partner. We were living before in China for a bit less than 2 years, and before that I was living in Brazil for a long time. We have a nice routine here, going to the University everyday and going for some nice walks in the fields nearby. Every year, I go to the Brazilian Amazon Forest to collect some data and continue my study, and I like it very much because I see a lot of animals, like jaguars, anacondas and a lot of monkeys and birds. In my free time, I like to travel in my free time, and learn new things, for example this year I was learning Chinese.  I also like hiking and surfing, but in the UK the water is perhaps a bit too cold for me, as I grew up in the warmer waters of the Algarve in Portugal.

My work is focused on vertebrate species, like mammals and reptiles. I try to understand how those species are responding to the habitat change, I mean, when forests destroyed and then that area is occupied by pastures for cows, growing crops, etc. I go to investigate before and after the destruction of the forest. Some animals can still live without the forest, but others go extinct. I then look for ways that is still possible for those more sensible animals to still remain in the area. For example, when people destroy the forest, perhaps they can leave some forest instead of destroying it all. Then, what is the best way for doing that. Imagine you have a very large forest and people are just about to destroy it. Is it better to leave half of that forest in one single piece or is it better to have many pieces of smaller size? Decisions like this can make the difference to save some animals from extinction, but first it is necessary to study the response of the different species in the field. Forests are being destroyed mostly in the tropical countries, where more species exist but also where less support is given towards conservation. So it is our responsibility here to help those countries. In fact, many of the commodities those countries produce, like the production of meat, soy and timber, are then exported to us.

When I am working at the University, I start the day when I am not sleepy anymore. That can be at 7 am or at 10 am, but I like to make sure I had a good rest so I can focus on my research. I live quiet far from the University, so I usually drive. I then get to the office, where I spend most of the time working in my computer. I also do a lot of breaks, have a lot of tea, and then meet my colleagues at lunch that I used to bring from home. In the afternoon, I used to go back around 18pm so I still have time to go to the gym. When I am in the field, usually in the Brazilian Amazon, my routine is a bit different. I use to get at at 5am, have a nice breakfast and get on the boat to start visiting the places where I do my surveys. Those places are often islands within a hydroelectric reservoir. There I place some traps (like cages with a bait inside) to capture small mammals, and also some camera-traps, which are normal photographic cameras that take a picture to every animal passing in front of the camera. By the end of the day, I have a great bath in the lake where I work, watching a magnificent sunset.