Sofia Capasso

Sofia joined the TIBODI team at the BIOEPAR unit this year with a Campus France postdoctoral fellowship, where she will be studying tick-borne diseases in Antartic seabirds. Her primary research interests include wildlife parasitology, with a focus on taxonomy, avian diseases, parasite transmission, their impact on hosts, and the ecological interactions between migratory birds and various parasite groups.

Her doctoral thesis, funded by CONICET (Argentina, 2014-2019), investigated the parasitic fauna of Nearctic migratory waders, exploring its relationship with migration strategies and trophic interactions. During her subsequent postdoctoral work (CONICET, Argentina, 2019-2021), she led a project on blood parasites in migratory seabirds, which took her to Germany for a research stay at Justus Liebig University of Giessen through a DAAD grant (2021). Later, she secured a Maria Zambrano postdoctoral position at the University of Extremadura in Badajoz (Spain, 2022-2024), where she studied the ecology of parasitism in migratory birds. Sofia also actively collaborates with the Argentine Antarctic Institute and has participated as a scientific technician in several Antarctic campaigns. She also has teached in both Argentina and Spain and has been involved in numerous scientific outreach activities.