BCG lab at the 2nd Italian Conference for Early Career Researchers in ConservationScience

Last week our BGC Lab team packed its bags and headed to L’Aquila for the 2nd Italian

Conference for Early Career Researchers in Conservation Science, “Biodiversity and Global

Changes: A Conservation Perspective”, which took place from May 6 to 9, 2025 at the Centro

Congressi “Luigi Zordan”. Many of our members presented their research in a series of engaging oral presentations across all our main lines of work. Our PhD students Giordano Mancini and Andrea Tonelli were both selected to participate in the Best Oral Presentation Award competition

with their talks “The peril of naive bioclimatic variable selection” and “Identifying life-history

patterns along the fast-slow continuum of mammalian viral carriers”. Our post-doc researchers Marta Cimatti and Chiara Dragonetti presented “The accelerating exposure of European protected areas to climate change” and “The impact of global change on the distribution of mountain mammals and birds”, while our Research Assistants Niccolò Ceci, Michela Gabrieli and Valerio Mezzanotte spoke about their works “A pilot assessment of Alfina biodiversity: setting the baseline for future rewilding plans”, “Biological and integrated management in Italian vineyards: effects on the diversity of three families of Dipterans (Insecta : Diptera)” and “The climate exposure of biodiversity inside Natura 2000 Network” respectively.

The conference gave us a fantastic chance to stay connected with the wider scientific community, engage with colleagues, exchange ideas and spark new collaborations—and even make some new friends. On Saturday we laced up our hiking boots for the Val Chiarino field excursion in Gran Sasso & Monti della Laga National Park, traversing beech-clad slopes from Lago di Provvidenza up past Rifugio Fioretti, spotting Apennine chamois and soaking in blooms of endemic alpine flowers and capped off the trip feeling re-energized and ready to be back in the lab. See you at the next conference!

PS : the conference was intense, but that was never a good excuse to decline a chance to dance or have an aperitivo together…