Dr. Cristian Durante is an OFI Visiting Fellow from the Centro para el Estudio de Sistemas Marinos of the National Research Council (CESIMAR - CONICET) in Argentina. On April 17, Dr. Durante will be presenting a talk on age estimation in wildlife dolphin species. This is a collaborative project with Dr. Daniel Ruzzante at Dalhousie University. This event will include a brief description of Dr. Durante’s research program on marine mammals in Argentina and an overview of his current project at Dalhousie, which aims to estimate the age of short-beaked common dolphins from the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean using DNA methylation patterns. The development of this project represents a significant advance in marine mammal studies by providing a practical solution for age estimation in wild populations.
Dr. Cristian Durante is an assistant researcher at the Centro para el Estudio de Sistemas Marinos (CESIMAR), an institute of the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) and is part of the Laboratorio de Mamíferos Marinos (LAMAMA). His work with marine mammals began with his undergraduate degree in biology, examining the concentrations of organic pollutants and heavy metals in two dolphin species from the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean. For his PhD project, he studied the trophic ecology and population genetics of two sympatric dolphin species from South America. Currently, Dr. Durante’s research focuses on characterizing the pelagic trophic webs of Argentine Patagonia by studying marine mammals. Using multidisciplinary approaches including molecular techniques and biogeochemical markers, his research aims to evaluate both short- and long-term effects of natural and human induced impacts on the ecosystem.
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