Sasha Marques de Vasconcelos

I’m a PhD student developing my thesis in the BIODIV doctoral programme at CIBIO-InBIO, in collaboration with the Department of Ecology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The focus of my research is to understand how arthropod communities, as well as the interactions between olive tree pests and parasitoids, are influenced by the intensification of olive farming practices.

My past work examined the relationships between arthropods and different forms of human-induced disturbance in Mediterranean as well as tropical ecosystems. Between 2012 and 2016, I identified and catalogued African butterfly collections as a research fellow at CIBIO-InBIO and the former Tropical Research Institute (IICT, Lisbon). In parallel, I collaborated in two projects: one examining the social and ecological implications of cashew monoculture expansion in West Africa (Guinea-Bissau), and the other focusing on the biodiversity impacts of large-scale EU afforestation schemes on Mediterranean open farmland (southern Portugal).