Joana Vicente, based at the Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources (CIBIO) at the University of Évora (Portugal), was a Fellow at the C·I·B during October and November 2014. Joana has a background in fundamental and applied research on ecological modelling of biogeographic patterns, landscape ecology, environmental change, and invasive alien species. Her current projects involve predicting the impacts of multi-scale environmental change on the biological invasions using both static and dynamic modelling techniques.
During her time in Stellenbosch, Joana presented a workshop on “Using species distributions models to assess and anticipate patterns of invasion”, and worked on a joint research project with C·I·B core team members Dave Richardson, Mirijam Gaertner, Cang Hui and others. The product of this collaboration will be a paper on how, when and why different types of regime shifts occur under different socio-economic contexts, using an agent-based model framework. The collaboration is part of the SESYNC project (“Socioecology of Acacia – Anticipatory governance and societal feedbacks in socio-environmental transitions: multicontinental acacia invasions as a model system”).
According to Joana, “C·I·B colleagues were really wonderful and very welcoming and it was a pleasure to be able to interact with several colleagues on interesting projects. My time [at the C·I·B] allowed me the opportunity to work on state-of-the art problems in invasion ecology, and also provided the basis for a strong collaboration between two Centres of Excellence: C·I·B and CIBIO.“
