My thesis was titled ‘
Evolution and Systematics of the prickly-pears in the Americas: from the field to the genomics’, in which I explored various taxonomic, genomic, biogeographic and evolutionary aspects of the cactus genus
Opuntia - the prickly-pears. I conducted my research under the supervision of
Profa. Dra. Tatiana T. Souza-Chies, from the
Botany Department of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, and
Dr. Lucas C. Majure, from the Florida Museum of Natural History / University of Florida (Gainesville, FL, USA), where I spent a period of seven months as a Visiting Researcher. Several outputs from my thesis have already been published as scientific papers (see ‘Publications’ tab or bbelow under ‘Read Thesis’), but this project has opened an endless avenue of research, with many questions I am still working on and that will be published in due time.