Raffaele Siano

Raffaele Siano obtained his PhD in 2008 in Naples (Italy, Stazione Zoologica A. Dohrn). He is at present researcher in Brest (Brittany, France) at Ifremer (Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer). He has a background in phytoplankton taxonomy and ecology, especially of dinoflagellates. Since the beginning of his career as a researcher in 2010, he has been applying molecular approaches to depict toxic dinoflagellate species phenologies and phytoplankton community patterns in a broad perspective of protist ecology (protist photosymbioses, host-parasites interactions, autotrophic-heterotrophic species competitions, functional diversity analysis of protist communities). He studies the consequences of human activities and natural events on HAB species distribution, development and spreading in coastal ecosystems. He is particularly interested in researches focusing on environmental DNA (eDNA) extracted from both the water column and the sediments and on the application of eDNA to monitor HAB species occurrences and invasions in the coastal waters. He has been focusing in particular on paleogenetic studies in order to assess protist community changes and multidecadal patterns of HAB species in relation with environmental variations. Paleogenetic studies are then associated to revivification of and ecophysiological analyses of old dinoflagellates strains to infer adaptations of modern populations at both the genotype and phenotype levels.