Joana Falcão Maia

Joana Falcão graduated in Biology from the University of Coimbra in 2008 and completed an MSc degree in Ecology in March 2010.Her interest in ecology, close contact with estuaries, marine ecosystems, and coastal waters, always present throughout the graduation, allowed her to work as a grant researcher in several research projects, from benthic sharks to zooplankton, passing by estuaries and the open sea. In 2016 she joined the Coastal Systems and Ocean research group at MARE-IPLeiria. She currently holds an FCT doctoral grant and develops her work at MARE-IPLEIRIA, Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre-Polytechnic of Leiria, CIIMAR-Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research, and IPMA-Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere. Her PhD project aims to address long term changes in jellyfish populations through the monetarization of populations of gelatinous organisms on the Portuguese coast and assist in predicting future abundance fluctuations of these organisms in a thermally changing ocean, trying to determine the mechanisms by which climate change interacts with them and their prey (zooplankton and fish larvae) while quantifying the effects of the blooms of these organisms on the ecosystem, their driving forces and potential consequences for the tourism, industry and fisheries sectors.