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PhD PROJECT

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Understanding what makes a lizard invasive: The role of behaviour and cognition

I was awarded in 2015 with a PhD

scholarship from Macquarie University,

Sydney, Australia.

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Given my passion for lizards, I obviously

had to end up doing my PhD at The Lizard Lab!

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My research was about a small lizard, the Italian Wall Lizard (Podarcis siculus), that can hitchhike, arrive to new places, and become invasive worldwide. I studied how different behavioural components can promote its invasive success. Although I was based in Sydney, I used a population invasive in Lisbon, so my field and lab work were carried out in Portugal.

 

​Briefly, I studied its behavioural flexibility, social information usage, behavioural traits, and also competitive ability. All features that should be involved in its invasive ability! Follow this project on Research Gate to see our interesting results!

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My PhD was jointly supervised by the awesome

Dr Martin Whiting (Macquarie University) and

Dr James Harris (CIBIO-InBIO).

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