Filipe Rocha

I am a Postdoc researcher at the Wildlife Conservation Ecology (WILDEcol) Research Group. During my PhD, I assessed the war-driven depletion in the medium to large-sized wild mammal assemblage in Southern Angola while also characterizing the community structure and composition. A second part of my PhD thesis described the community functioning and ecosystem processes that might have been altered by the change in the community structure and composition and the extinction of species. Namely, I found that human disturbance and livestock encroachment overcome ecological processes, such as predation and competition, in regulating wild ungulates space use, which are restricted to suboptimal areas. In another paper, I found an unexpected reduction in herbivore occupancy of burned areas after the fire, which usually seeks these areas for fresh and nutritious vegetation. I suggest that altered fire regimes and reduced herbivory may lead to changes in the vegetal structure, creating undesirable habitat for herbivores. In the last paper, I suggest that the depletion in prey and predator species may have changed predator-prey dynamics, as we have not found spatiotemporal proactive antipredator behavior of prey species, regardless of predator hunting mode and pry importance to predator diet. 

I am currently continuing the projects in which my PhD was included, namely the long-term monitoring program WILDEcol research group set in some Angolan conservation areas. Additionally, I am coordinating a collaborative project with the Portuguese Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF) to create a long-term monitoring program for mammals in the protected areas of Northern Portugal. My research interests lie in understanding predator-prey dynamics in depleted systems. Namely, I want to understand how prey manage the predation risk in landscapes where the risk of being predated is reduced and the trade-offs they are usually exposed to.