Ana P. Coelho

University of Lisbon | UL · Departamento de Biologia Animal

The island of São Tomé, in the Gulf of Guinea, is a biodiversity hotspot with a remarkable number of endemic species. While introduced species are generally perceived as a major threat to the conservation of native biota, their exact impacts on key ecosystem functions remain poorly understood. Animal-mediated seed dispersal, is one such functions,...

For migratory birds, selecting a wintering location is extremely important as conditions experienced in winter can have both immediate and future consequences through carry-over effects. The Bijagós archipelago, in West Africa, hosts large numbers of migratory waders during winter. Despite the extensive feeding areas available, and several roosting...

Along the East Atlantic Flyway thousands of waders winter in tropical sites in West Africa. In spring, these waders must travel to their breeding areas in temperate and arctic zones, migrating across very large distances. The flight distance a migrant is able to cover in a single flight allows predicting potential stop-over areas, as direct flights...

The coastal intertidal ecosystem of the Bijagós Archipelago, Guinea-Bissau, one of the largest and most important in West Africa, sustains a considerable proportion of the migratory shorebird populations of the East Atlantic Flyway and operates as a nursery area for benthic fish in the region. The macrozoobenthos in these mudflats constitute the ma...

Biological invasions are a major threat to global biodiversity with particularly deleteri-ous consequences on oceanic islands. The introduction of large terrestrial animals-generally absent on islands-can disrupt important ecosystem functions, such as the dispersal of native seeds. However, while the consequences of plant invasions received much at...

The arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are a globally distributed group of soil organisms that play critical roles in ecosystem function. However, the ecological niches of individual AM fungal taxa are poorly understood. We collected > 300 soil samples from natural ecosystems worldwide and modelled the realised niches of AM fungal virtual taxa (VT;...

Com a população mundial a aumentar, os impactos antropogénicos nos ecossistemas naturais vão sendo cada vez mais evidentes. A extinção de espécies, atualmente a um ritmo bastante acelerado, acarreta também uma perda nas funções e serviços ecossistémicos deixando por vezes os ecossistemas mais vulneráveis às pressões humanas. A dispersão de sementes...