Conservation in Socio-Ecological Systems - CSES
Landscape Epidemiology and Wildlife Diseases

Patrícia Pereira Lopes

PhD Student

Veterinary medicine Life sciences Infectious diseases Parasitology

Patrícia Lopes is conducting a Ph.D. in Biology by the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon starting in 2020 within the Landscape Epidemiology and Wildlife Diseases group. She is conducting the project "Population structure and environmental predictors of Echinococcus granulosus infection under the One Health paradigm", under the supervision of Mónica V. Cunha of Landscape Epidemiology and Wildlife Diseases of cE3c. The Ph.D. project aims are:
1. To improve knowledge on CE epidemiology and prevalence in Portugal, both in terms of definitive and intermediate hosts, as well as in relation to geographical areas, contributing to map spatial risk;
2. To develop and validate molecular biomarkers for source attribution of Echinococcus spp.;
3. To disclose the population structure and biogeography of E. granulosus based on WGS and reconstruct the underlying transmission chains, using domestic and wildlife species as models;
4. To identify predictors of Echinococcus spp. infection using ecological modelling approaches. Prevalence data, WGS and metadata will be integrated with environmental and human-related perturbation variables to quantify the contribution of explanatory variables to infection risk.