Current students
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Estela Dibo Soares, BSc
2018-2020, MSc student at Graduate Program in Coastal and Oceanic Systems Institution: Centro de Estudos do Mar, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil Supervisor: Dr. Camila Domit, Co-supervisor: Mauricio Cantor Master's dissertation: Skin diseases in Guiana dolphin at port and conservation areas: short-term responses to anthropogenic disturbance Funding: CAPES M.Sc. scholarship (Brazil) What is she up to? Estela always liked the ocean and the animals that are living in that environment and she is interested in work with marine mammals, researching mainly behavior and ecology, in order to understand more about these animals and the environment where they live, analyzing the anthropic impacts for contribute to the preservation of these individuals and through this information contribute for the research too. Through her master degree in Centro de Estudos do Mar of UFPR, with the professor Camila Domit and the co-supervisor Mauricio Cantor, she is having the opportunity that she always dreamed. |
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Shanan Atkins, MSc
2018-2021, PhD candidate at the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences Institution: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Neville Pillay, Co-supervisor: Mauricio Cantor PhD thesis: Identifying leverage points to solve the human-wildlife conflict regarding shark nets What is she up to? Shanan is wild about biodiversity in all its amazing manifestations and is driven to use science to inform effective conservation action to prevent the loss of biodiversity. Sharks and other marine animals are systematically killed in shark nets in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, that have been set to reduce the risk of shark attack. They are culled to ensure human well-being and safeguard tourism and this is controversial but difficult to change. We’re using a human-wildlife conflict framework to investigate the issue - mapping the conflict to identify leverage points and searching for innovative solutions to manage it. We aim to examine the needs, perceptions and attitudes of the decision-makers and the general public, and to find answers to questions such as ‘what non-lethal alternatives exist that could be useful?’ and ‘how do endangered humpback dolphins behave at a particularly risky beach?’ |
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Alexandre Marcel da Silva Machado, MSc
2019-2023, PhD student at the Graduate Programme in Ecology Institution: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, UFSC, Brazil Supervisor: Prof. Fabio Daura-Jorge, Co-supervisor: Mauricio Cantor PhD thesis: The influence of individual heterogeneity in the dynamics of dolphin-fishermen foraging and the implications for the dolphin population What is he up to? Alexandre will seek his PhD degree by studying how the individual variation in dolphins that forage with artisanal fishermen influence the population dynamics in Laguna. He is interested in a) describing the fine-scale spatial dynamics of foraging dolphins collecting multiple data types simultaneously; b) testing whether there are any dominance hierarchy among dolphins during the interactions with fishermen; c) quantifying the influence of individual variation to the foraging success of fishermen; and d) evaluating the population-level implications of such variation to the dolphins. Alê will be supervised by Prof. Fabio Daura-Jorge. More info: Alexandre's personal page, Twitter, ResearchGate |
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João Victor Silva do Valle Pereira, BSc
2019-2021, MSc student at Graduate Programme in Ecology, Institution: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil Supervisor: Prof. Fabio Daura-Jorge, Co-supervisor: Mauricio Cantor MSc dissertation: Individual behavioural variation among artisanal fishermen may affect the foraging cooperation with wild dolphins What is he up to? João will carry out his Masters thesis on the individual behavioural variation among artisanal fishermen in Laguna who interact with wild dolphins. He will empirically describe the dynamic fishing system by artisanal fishermen using state-of-the-art field methods. With data on the fine-scale spatial variation during the cooperative fishing, he will investigate how competition among fishermen can give rise to cooperation with dolphins. João will be supervised by Prof. Fabio Daura-Jorge. More info: Twitter, ResearchGate |
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Bruna Santos da Silva, BSc
2019-2021, MSc student at Graduate Programme in Ecology, Institution: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil Supervisor: Prof. Prof. Natalia Hanazaki, Co-supervisor: Mauricio Cantor MSc dissertation: Is the structure of the fishermen's society similar to the social structure of the dolphins they forage with? What is she up to? Bruna will develop her Masters thesis on the social structure of the artisanal fishermen who have been fishing with wild dolphins in Laguna for decades. Her main goal is to map the network of affiliative associations among individual fishermen and evaluate the influence of some drivers in shaping their social structure, such as kinship, similarity in fishing area, age classes, fishing experience and economical dependence on this type fishery. She will work closely with the fishermen and get to know their social lives via semi-structured interviews and network theory. Bruna will be supervised by Prof. Natalia Hanazaki. |
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André Nogueira
2018, undergraduate research training Institution: Undergraduate in Biological Sciences, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil Supervisor: Prof. Paulo Simões-Lopes, Collaborator: Mauricio Cantor What is he up to? André is an undergraduate student of biological sciences supervised by Prof. Simões-Lopes. At the moment he has been developing a honour's research project about the occurrence of orcas in Santa Catarina, Brazil, obtaining information through the population (citizen science) via opportunistic observations, bibliographical analysis and land-ased monitoring to understand the occurrence patterns of this species in Santa Catarina waters. Using orcas as a model of study, his work has the potential to inform and sensitize the population of Santa Catarina on environmental issues, helping to demystify the popular belief that they are a danger, contributing to the diffusion of the importance of preserving their ecological role extends beyond the coast of Santa Catarina. Currently, André is also doing an internship at a non-for-profit organization focused on the biology and conservation of the southern right whales |
Former students
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Jack Peter Ford
2017-2018, Supervised student, undergraduate research training Institution: Undergraduate in Zoology, Cardiff University, Wales, UK Supervisor: Mauricio Cantor, Mentor: Prof. Frank Hailer Dissertation: Do dolphins that forage with net-casting fishermen use signature whistles? Funding: Cardiff University, UK What is he up to? Jack is very interested in social systems, communication and learning in cetaceans and like to investigate the debate of cetacean culture. In Wales, he has spent a lot of time studying harbour porpoises as well as monitoring populations of bottlenose and common dolphins through photo-identification and ferry transects. Jack is spending his Professional Training Year (PTY) at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Florianopolis, Brazil) to experience the exciting project on the Bottlenose dolphins that cooperatively forage with artesanal fishermen in Laguna. |
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Bianca Perez
2018, Supervised student, undergraduate research training Institution: Undergraduate in Biological Sciences, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil Supervisor: Mauricio Cantor What is she up to? Bianca has great interest in the area of sociobiology of cetaceans, as well as dedicating herself to education and environmental conservation. Starting her career in this area, she carried out her undergraduate research training with a project analyzing aspects of the cooperative behaviour of the Bottlenose dolphin population with artesanal fishermen in Laguna. Currently, she is doing at internship in a non-for-profit organization focused on the biology and conservation of the southern right whales. |
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João Victor Silva do Valle Pereira, BSc
2017-2018, Supervised undergraduate student Honours thesis: Influence of behavioural context on the social structure of dolphins that forage with artisanal fishermen Institution: Undergraduate course in Biological Sciences, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil Funding: PIBIC-UFSC Honours scholarship from CNPq (Brazil) Congrats on having the project selected! What is he up to? João has just completed his honours thesis studying the bottlenose dolphins in Laguna. His goal was to estimate how much the frequency of engaging in the cooperative foraging behaviour with artisanal fishermen drives the association patterns among dolphins. He also used tools from network theory to explore how the behavioural context affects the social structure of the dolphins. |
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Alexandre Marcel da Silva Machado, MSc
2016-2018, Co-supervised graduate student (Supervisor: Prof. Fabio Daura-Jorge) Master's thesis: Individual traits affect the society of bottlenose dolphins that forages cooperatively with artisanal fishermen Institution: Graduate Programme in Ecology, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, UFSC, Brazil Funding: CAPES M.Sc. scholarship (Brazil) and small grants by the Society for Marine Mammalogy (USA) and the Animal Behaviour Society (USA). Congrats on getting these! What is he up to? Alê has just earned his Master's degree in Ecology studying the bottlenose dolphin population of dolphins that forage with artisanal fishermen. Laguna’s bottlenose dolphin population is structured into distinct social modules of dolphins that interact or not wth fishermen. His main goal was to tease apart the contributions of biological, ecological and behavioral traits of the individuals in shaping the society into these modules, which can lend support for the hypothesis that social learning of this cooperative foraging tactic may be the primary mechanism underpinning this modular social structure. More info: Twitter, ResearchGate |
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Luiza Beirão-Campos, MSc
2013-2015, Co-supervised graduate student (Supervisor: Prof. Paulo C. Simões-Lopes) Master's dissertation: Do space use influence social relationships of Guiana dolphins? Institution: Graduate Programme in Ecology, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, UFSC, Brazil Funding: CAPES M.Sc. scholarship (Brazil) Publications:
What is she up to? Luiza has a bachelor's degree in Biology and a Master's in Ecology, during which she studied the social structure of the Guiana Dolphins. She worked as a cetacean researcher at the Instituto Boto Cinza, and other marine conservation NGOs in Brazil. Nowadays Luiza is a marine scientist at Oceana. More info: ResearchGate Wilfried Beslin, MSc
2013, volunteer research assistant during the project "Galápagos sperm whales" Institution: Dalhousie University, Canada Activities: Wilfried was one of the brave and hard working volunteers who helped me identify thousands of sperm whale codas from our expeditions off the Galápagos Islands in 2013 and 2014. We spent several hours listening to the whales and marking their social sounds, which later on were found to be from different vocal clans than we expected in the area. What is he up to? Wilfried earned his Master's degree on bioacoustics of sperm whales, in which he is developing his own programs to automatically count and measure sperm whales from their echolocation clicks. Wilfried works under the supervision of Dr. Hal Whitehead at Dalhousie University, and in collaboration with Dr. Shane Gero who leads the Dominica Sperm Whale Project. |
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Brooke Santiago, High school student
2015-2017, Mentored high school student Research project 1: Correlating different sized sperm whale groups to their amount of coda production Research Project 2: Characterizing Sequences of Codas Produced by Sperm Whales from Different Clans Institution: East Hampton High School, New York, US What is she up to? Brooke is a very keen high school student who has helping us to analyze coda production by sperm whales off Galápagos during our 2013-14 expeditions. My colleague Ana Eguiguren and I have been mentoring her while she carries out her own research projects on sperm whale bioacoustics. Recently, her project won a High Honours Award at the Long Island Science Congress competition!! |
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Undergraduate research training
Josh Madin, Elizabeth Hurley, Madison Evans, Hujo Arriojas 2014-2016, Mentored undergraduate students on the research project of Sperm whales off the Galápagos Institution: Dalhousie University, Canada |
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