Jilda Alicia Caccavo

Ant-ICON Chief Officers’ EMCR

Dr Jilda Alicia Caccavo is a marine biologist who combines multidisciplinary approaches to study the population dynamics of Antarctic species in the Southern Ocean. Specializing in pelagic notothenioids, particularly Antarctic silverfish and toothfish, Jilda combines hydrographic and life-history data in order to build population structure hypotheses that she tests using genomics and trace-element analysis. Jilda has a keen interest in steering her research questions towards the needs of the community and policymakers. Indeed, she is a member of the scientific steering committees of the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) and the Marine Ecosystem Assessment for the Southern Ocean (MEASO), holds a Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) scientific scholarship, and is a current Executive Committee ex-officio, and past-president of the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS). A native New Yorker, Jilda’s research has taken her from London to the north of Italy, the south of France to Berlin, and soon to Paris, where she will be leading a groundbreaking project combining environmental modelling and genomics to predict changes in Antarctic species distributions under climate change.

Current research projects / interests:

• Population dynamics of Antarctic toothfish using genomics and trace-element analysis
• Climate genomics of Antarctic toothfish to predict species distribution shifts under climate change

Keywords: genomics, Antarctic fish, population biology, fisheries management, species-distribution modelling, biophysical interactions