Ecology of Environmental Change - eChanges
Evolutionary Ecology - EE
MITE2: Multidisciplinary Investigation Targeting Ecology and Evolution

Diogo Prino Godinho

Post-Doc Researcher

Herbivorous mites Plant-herbivore interactions Metal accumulation Behaviour and evolution Competition Experimental evolution

My scientific interests lie mostly within biotic interactions, important drivers of community composition and ecosystem functioning. In particular, I aim to understand how biotic and abiotic factors interact in shaping species performance and distribution.

I received a PhD in Biodiversity, Genetics and Evolution from the University of Lisbon in 2020. During my PhD thesis, supervised by Sara Magalhães and Cristina Branquinho, I studied plant-herbivore interactions in metal polluted environments. My work resulted in important contributions to the understanding of metal accumulation by plants as a defence against herbivory and of the responses of herbivores to such defences. I also characterized niche differences (or similarities) of two competing herbivorous spider-mites, Tetranychus urticae and T. evansi, within plants and among plants with different cadmium concentrations. Currently, in my post-doc at the MITE2: lab, I have been studying the adaptation of spider mites to cadmium accumulation in tomato plants, in presence or absence of heterospecific competitors. Conversely, I study how adaptation to a stressful environment shapes the coexistence between these two herbivores.