Helena Mendes-Soares
Hometown: Oeiras, PORTUGAL
Program at IU: Evolution, Ecology and Behavior (EEB) Graduate Program
Main interests: I’m interested in the evolution of phenotypic diversity, especially of the environmentally induced kind (phenotypic plasticity)
What I’m doing right now: I am trying to describe the variation observed in the predatory behavior of Myxococcus xanthus on different prey species, and how this variation changes after evolution in environments with different degrees of heterogeneity.
My education information: BSc Zoology, Fac. Ciencias Universidade de Lisboa; Msc Ethology, Inst. Superior de Psicologia Aplicada
Work info: I was a Research Fellow at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia; and an AI at Indiana University- Bloomington (L113 Biology Laboratory, S318 Evolution – Honors)
Fellowships and/or awards: I received an honorable mention from a drawing of giraffes I did when I was 8 (I was very proud!)
2003-2004 – Leonardo da Vinci Program, Agreement no. P/03/A/F/PL-125809
2005- 2006- Research Fellowship at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia – Fellowship POCI/BIA-BDE/55758/2004 - FCT/FEDER/MCTES
2008- 2011 – FCT Ph. D Fellowship from the Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia, Fellowship SFRH/BD/36183/2007
2008 – Travel grant for attendance of scientific meeting from the Microbiology Studies Program of the Department of Biology of Indiana University – Bloomington
My other interests: I’m also interested in History of Science, more specifically the history of Evolutionary thought since the beginning of the 19th century.
My hobbies: Juggling and staring into space!
What I want to do when I grow up: When I grow up I want to teach in a small college and have a small lab where undergraduate students can do short-term evolutionary experiments and simple projects with microorganisms.
My collaborators and friends at IU: Kayla King, Hadas Hawlena
My collaborators and friends outside of IU: Francisco Dionisio (IGC/FCUL)
My contact information (e-mails followed by indiana.edu):
mhmendes@
Department of Biology JHA313
Indiana University - Bloomington
(812) 855-9332
Publications:
Mendes-Soares, H. and Rychlik, L. (2008), Differences in swimming and diving abilities between two sympatric species of water shrews: Neomys anomalus and Neomys fodiens (Soricidae), Journal of Ethology, Online first
Velicer, G. J. and Mendes-Soares, H. (2009), Bacterial Predators, Current Biology, 19(2): R55-R56.
Hawlena, H., Bashey, F., Mendes-Soares, H., Lively, C. M. (2010) Spiteful interactions in a natural population of the bacterium Xenorhabdus bovienii, The American Naturalist (accepted)