Research projects
Transparency in butterflies and moths
Transparency is common in organisms living in water, where there is nowhere to hide, but it is rare in terrestrial environments, with few exceptions (e.g., winged insects). Although wings of butterflies and moths are often opaque, transparency has evolved several times independently, in both brightly coloured and dull-coloured butterfly clades. As a CNRS postdoctoral researcher at CEFE, I joined the first interdisciplinary research group studying transparency in Lepidoptera. My role is to test for the potential evolution of transparency in butterflies as an antipredatory defence [more info here].
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Toxic moths harmful to humans
In 2019, I started to develop and implement my own project to study South American toxic moths harmful to humans from the genera Hylesia and Lonomia, starting with H. metabus. Females of all Hylesia species have urticating hairs on their abdomen that are easily detachable and represent a sanitary risk. In particular, they produce unpredictable outbreaks, during which hundreds of moths fly above the cities attracted by their white lights, covering inhabitants, play grounds, house gardens or drying clothes with urticating hairs. This results in dermatitis epidemics, sometimes together with respiratory and ocular symptoms [more info here].
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Polymorphism in unpalatable and colorful prey
During my BsC at the University of Los Andes (Colombia) and my PhD at the MNHN (Paris), I studied the evolution of variations in unpalatable and colorful (i.e. aposematic) species, using dendrobatid frogs and Heliconius butterflies as model systems. Combining experiments in the field and in the lab, citizen science experiments using videogames and chemical analyses I have studied the evolution of phenotypic variation in both the visual and toxicity signals [more info here].
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