L. (Luiz) Jardim de Queiroz

Biogeography of ‘inverted islands’: The evolutionary history of the fish community in the postglacial perialpine lakes

This is a project funded by the Posdtoc.Mobility program of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), and hosted by the University of Groningen and Naturalis. Collaborators from Swiss institutions, Eawag, University of Bern, and the Natural History Museum of Bern, are also closely involved.
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In this project, I have two main goals:

First, I aim at investigating the role of colonization, extinction and speciation in the rapid build-up of fish diversity in postglacial perialpine lakes of the European Alps, a system that may function as archipelagos of inverted islands. 

Moreover, I want to address the shape of the fish species–area relationship (SAR) in the perialpine lakes and how similar it is with other systems (e.g. oceanic islands). Since the past centuries, this lacustrine system has been under strong influence of human activities, leading to population extirpations, species extinctions, translocations and introductions), I am also accessing whether these human-induced phenomena have changed significantly the shaple of SAR.