I lead a young research group of enthusiastic biologists and data scientists interested in understanding how animal-microbiota interactions shape ecological and evolutionary processes.
My research is focused on understanding how animal-microbiota-environment interactions affect animal behaviour and its implication for animal ecology and evolution.
As the project and outreach manager for the 3D’omics project I am facilitating communication between the partners, help to keep the project on track, and convey our results to the public.
I am involved in optimising the lab procedures for the 3D’omics project, which aims to generate a 3D reconstruction of the animal-intestinal microbiota interactions.
I am an evolutionary biologist who explores the boundaries of species. With the hologenomics approach I will uncover the evolutionary interactions between two toad species, their microbiomes, and the notorious chytrid fungus.
I am fascinated by the co-evolution of microbes with their hosts. My research seeks to understand what these intimate relationships mean for animal health and evolution, with a particular focus on wild mammals.
I am an ecologist with knowledge on statistical modelling and data analysis. Currently, my research mainly focuses on studying microbial species distributions and diversity, as well as host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions.
My research focuses on how the hologenomic approach can be applied in the conservation of endangered animal species by pre-conditioning the microbiome of captive-bred individuals prior to their release into the wild.
I am a molecular biologist who has previously focused on the role of the intestine in relation to Type 2 Diabetes. My current research focuses on generating intestinal organoid models from a range of host animals as well as optimizing gut-on-a-chip technology.
I am an ecologist interested in the potential role played by metagenomic plasticity in biological invasions. My research focusses on studying gut microbial diversity in a native-invasive vertebrate system, and how it relates with dietary flexibility, resistance to parasites and animal personality.
Amalia is working in developing and implementing micro-scale metagenomics in the EU project 3D'omics.
The focus of my PhD research is behavioural hologenomics. Thus, I investigate how the gut microbes associated to a certain host affect its brain – hence, behaviour – using a hologenomic approach.
My PhD focuses around the ecological role of dry-stone walls on the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. I’m particularly interested in characterizing trophic interactions through metabarcoding.
I am studying how climate change is affecting bat hibernation and what changes in the transcriptome and metabolome are happening due to the prolonged winter inactivity.
Based at the University of Porto, the research of my Ph.D. focuses on the impacts that anthropogenic habitats have on the diet, microbiome, and genome of fire salamanders in the north-western Iberian Peninsula.
I am interested in applying a hologenomic approach in animal production to understand how pre- and probiotics affect host and gut microbiota interactions towards improving animal welfare.
My PhD focuses on exploring the gut microbiome of lizards and the interactions between these bacteria and their host. Thus, aiming to understand the role of gut microbes in lizard adaptation to different environments.
David's project is on understanding the evolutionary features of genome-reduced bacteria associated with vertebrates.
I am setting up a gut-on-a-chip model to study animal-microbiota interactions of different species during healthy and diseased steady states.
As a molecular biologist I perform DNA extractions and library building for the Earth Hologenome Initiative and I generate data used in projects investigating the interaction between vertebrates and their gut microbiome.
Johan is putting together an animal trait database to be used on evolutionary host-microbiota analyses.
With a love for learning, DIY-projects, and microbiology, I assume the role as research assistant, where I help implement and optimise the AlberdiLab laboratory protocols for automation purposes.
Aoife's research focussed on addressing eco-evolutionary questions about the interaction between ecological niches and gut microbiomes of vertebrates as part of the Earth Hologenome Initiative.
Amalia worked as data manager on the 3D'omics project, implementing the data repository and contributing to the set up of analysing pipelines.
Marta worked on the 3D'omics project, implementing molecular techniques to unveil the three-dimensional conformation of animal-microbiota multi-omic interactions.
Ana worked as project and outreach manager for the 3D’omics project before she took on the role as VOLT centre administrator.
Mandy's PhD project revolved around the gut microbiome of domestic and feral cats.
Adam's PhD focused around the role of gut microbiomes in species adaptation. Particularly, looking at metagenomic and taxonomic profiles of these communities and how they form/shape adaptive process to novel environmental conditions.
Lasse's research focused on how the hologenomic approach can be applied in the conservation of endangered animal species by pre-conditioning the microbiome of captive-bred individuals prior to their release into the wild.
Louisa worked as a laboratory technician on the Holofood and EHI projects.
Martina contributed to the automatisation of laboratory procedures and took part in the development of the Earth Hologenome Initiative.
While being a Bioinformatics student at KU, Nuria worked on the implementation of Holoflow - our in-house pipeline for hologenomics data generation and analysis.
Claudia's project is on understanding the effect of microbiomes in the adaptation to anthropic environments in squirrels.
Elsa's Master project focuses on understanding the effects of management in the microbiome of Greenland sled dogs.
Mireya is working on the development of organoids from diverse animal tissues
Jenny developed pipelines for omics analyses of samples deriving from swine and their gut microbiome.
Wanxin visited us to perform metagenomics analysis from cow microbiome samples.
Jasper's project is on understanding the comtribution of intestinal microbiomes to the capacity of vultures to feed on rotten carcasses.
Eray worked on transcriptomics analyses of broiler chickens within the context of the H2020 project HoloFood.
Muzahir worked on chicken transcriptomics and 16S amplicon sequencing of caecal microbiomes.
Nerea visited us to perform metagenomic analysis of tawny owl faecal samples and cloacal swabs.
Álvaro visited us to generate DNA metabarcoding data from mycorrhizal samples from Greenland.
Evie visited us twice to generate metabarcoding and shotgun metagenomic data from bat faeces.
Matteo visited us to work on the bioinformatic analysis of ancient coprolites of bronce age dogs.