Rafael Campos

I am a BIODIV PhD student at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto (FCUP). I am currently financed by the FCT 2021 PhD Scholarship program. I graduated in Biology in 2015 and got my Masters in Biodiversity, Genetics and Evolution in 2018, both from the University of Porto.

My current field of research is population ecology and my main academic interest is the management and conservation of large carnivores. The bulk of my academic background has been dedicated to wolves, mostly within the Iberian and Carpathian populations. During my master thesis I handled traditional monitoring datasets (field, camera-trap, and telemetry data) and worked with count-based and known-fate models.

Wolves’ howling behavior is fundamental for traditional monitoring schemes, particularly in regions where snow is absent. During my PhD I will explore the use of passive acoustic monitoring as a mean to assess wolf presence and abundance. My goals are to automatize and standardize how howl-derived data is collected in the field, and explore new monitoring schemes based on spontaneous howling.