Alessandro Pinto

Alessandro Pinto

Profile

In 2020 I graduated from UEA with a BSc in Ecology with a year abroad, which I spent studying in Lund University. My undergraduate dissertation was a comparative study on the biodiversity of hymenopteran pollinators in Swedish forests, and reflected my broader interest in landscape scale ecology. Immediately afterwards I began working on population genetic modelling, focussing on the pink pigeon in Mauritius.

From 2020-22 I worked to obtain my MSc in Conservation Biology from Lund University, acquiring skills in statistical analysis and developing my interest ornithology and the conservation field as a whole. I returned to modelling for my Master’s thesis, entitled ‘Simulating genomic effects of bottlenecks and habitat loss with explicit spatial models’, again focussing on the pink pigeon in Mauritius.

Alessandro Pinto

PhD title: Understanding lifelong and multigenerational inbreeding effects in the Seychelles warbler

How strongly inbreeding impacts wild animal populations and their conservation is still much debated, and probably greatly underestimated! As anthropogenic effects are driving many species into small, stressed populations where inbreeding and its effects are greatly exacerbated, it is urgent and important to resolve this question.

Previous studies on inbreeding have been undermined by difficulties in measuring inbreeding, and/or restricted to short-term assessments of survival and reproduction. To properly quantify inbreeding depression, reproductive success must be measured across entire lifespans, and ideally beyond – to quantify each individual’s genetic contribution to the population after multiple generations.

The monitoring of a small, isolated island population of the Seychelles warbler since 1993 provides an exceptional dataset tracking breeding and reproduction over the lives of 2000+ individuals. Using this genomic information the life-long fitness effects of inbreeding in the Seychelles Warbler can be determined.

 

More information on the Seychelles Warbler working group can be found here – https://seychelles-warbler.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/

ORCiD

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7429-5372

ResearchGate

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alessandro-Pinto-9