I am an ecological modeller specialised in large-scale palaeoecological analyses. I mostly focus on reconstructing species and population dynamics through time. I do so by integrating data and methods from different fields: ecology, archaeology, palaeoclimatology, population genetics.

I co-developed two R packages that facilitate palaeoecological analyses on time-scattered data: pastclim to easily access and use palaeoclimatic reconstructions, and tidysdm, to perform ecological niche modelling through time. Both can be also used for present-day data and future projections, allowing direct comparisons between the past and the present in the context of environmental sciences and conservation.

Within FORAGER, I will be working on WP4.1, modelling the ecological niches of key food resources (i.e. prey animal and plant species of interest) in the different study areas. The methods used will allow to capture changes over time.

Find out more about Michela here.