Ms Isabel Blasco-Costa

I have a sound and long-standing interest in biodiversity of parasitic organisms, in particular trematodes and monogeneans, that leads me to resolve taxonomic problems, unravel cryptic parasite diversity and biogeographic patterns using interdisciplinary approaches.

In my young research lab, we combine classical taxonomy, phylogenetic methods and biogeography to examine the parasite species diversity, diversification and phylogeographic patterns.
We also apply a combination of population genetics and ecological approaches to investigate how life cycle strategies, transmission modes and ecological processes influence the genetic make up of parasite species, their distribution and host-parasite associations.
In addition, we apply co-phylogenetic approaches to better understand the evolution of current host-parasite associations.
We combine all the above with extensive fieldwork in both freshwater and marine environments.