My name is Iulian Gherghel, I'm a Ph.D. candidate and a central goal of my research is to understand the patterns and mechanisms underlying biological diversification and species distributions across scales. A significant part of my research also includes conservation, remote sensing and rewilding. A few of the questions that keep me busy are 1) how the biotic interactions and abiotic factors drive adaptation and diversification; 2) what is the role of biotic interactions and abiotic factors in shaping intraspecific trait variation in space and time; 3) investigating the factors that determine species distributions under global change; 4) refining and developing the existing methodologies used in biogeography and macroecology; and 5) how do organisms cope with the rapidly changing environment during Anthropocene. I explore these questions using a variety of tools, including geospatial analysis, remote sensing, species distributions modeling, landscape connectivity modeling, field observations, and experiments. For my research, I often use a combination of field observations, literature data, herbarium and/or museum data, as well as online databases and citizen data to gather species distribution and phenotypic data.
Latest article
Gherghel, I., Strugariu, A., Tedrow, R., Romanescu, R. (2019) A regional analysis on the amphibian and reptile communities from the Carpathian Mountains and the abiotic factors that shape their distributions and community assemblages. Regional Environmental Change 19: 2563–2572. DOI:10.1007/s10113-019-01577-6
Conferences
News
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October 2019: Our paper on using geostatistics to infer dispersal of Podarcis muralis into new territories was published in Acta Oecologica
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September 2019: Our paper on how amphibian and reptiles communities structure and what abiotic factors influence their assemblages was accepted in Regional Environmental Change
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July 2019: Our paper on the importance of accessible areas when modeling species distributions was accepted in Progress in Physical Geography
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June - September 2019: Fieldwork in the Southwestern United States
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January 2019: Our paper how temperature shapes the costs, benefits and the geographic diversification of sexual colors was published in Ecology Letters
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January 2019: I have attended and presented two posters on my work on sea kraits and on modeling the colonization routes from last glacial maximum to today based on corridor modeling at the International Biogeography Conference from Spain.