About Luis Cunha

Molecular Ecologist / Group Leader

My Story

Welcome!! My name is Luis Cunha, and I am a molecular ecologist specialized in invertebrate biology, currently working as an assistant researcher at Centro de Ecologia Funcional (Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal).  My research focuses on soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, with a particular interest in historical anthropogenic ecosystems (e.g. Amazonian Dark Earth). I am profoundly fascinated by the diversity of life found underground (unfortunately, also highly neglected), their functional roles and how evolution took part in this fascinating realm. Currently, I am the joint-Director of the “Terra Preta de Indio” international network. 

During my PhD studies, the focus of my research changed from tissue and cell marker analyses to the molecular level, enabling the study of a population of earthworms living in what I like to describe as a volcanic furnace of evolution, a geothermal field in Sao Miguel Island (Azores, Portugal). To increase my expertise, I initiated collaboration with Prof. John Morgan and Prof. Peter Kille at Cardiff University and together, we wrote a research proposal that was graded as Excellent and successfully funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation (Grant PTDC/AAC-AMB/115713/2009). With these funds, I was able to characterise genetically a population of earthworms living inside the geothermal field, including, among others, the identification of various loci under positive selection, which likely reflects the worm’s adaptation to the extreme volcanic environmental conditions.

I have been actively involved in several NGS-based genomic and transcriptomic projects to assemble and annotate several invertebrate genomes. I am also involved in projects related to evolutionary ecology, phylogenetics and population genetics (and genomics), including of metazoan organisms living in extreme environments. I am also interested in using animals closely associated with human activity to better understand the human-environment dimension in a range of anthropized contexts like agricultural landscapes.

Highlights

He has been invited to give some seminal talks in subjects such “The use of transcriptomics in Ecotoxicology” or for instance “Interculturality and knowledge in Life Sciences research”, which show how easy is for him to circulate around different research themes and public alike. The lack of funding for specific activities allowed him to engage with entrepreneurship and a case of crowdsourcing funding, which ended up featured in several media channels like Newsweek. He has also been an active reviewer (https://publons.com/a/149210), and he is a member of several societies such as SETAC, British Ecological Society, Systematic Biology Society, Society for the Study of Evolution and the International Society of Computational Biology.