{"id":10,"date":"2015-04-08T11:14:27","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T09:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.unipi.it\/cloner\/?page_id=10"},"modified":"2019-09-15T16:48:44","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T14:48:44","slug":"research","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.unipi.it\/paolo_luschi\/research-2\/research\/","title":{"rendered":"Overview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Islameta<\/a><\/h3>\n

I am currently leading a small research group, known as Islameta Research Group<\/span>, which studies of the migrations and long-distance movements of animals<\/span>, with special attention to marine turtles. The group is part of the Ethology unit<\/a> of the Dept. of Biology, University of Pisa.
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The research of the group was originally focused on the navigational and orientation systems the animals rely on to reach specific targets, following a fruitful line of research started by the late Prof. Floriano Papi <\/span>(formerly full professor of Ethology at the University of Pisa) with experiments on sea turtle migrations and navigation in the 1990s and 2000s. <\/span><\/h3>\n

In more recent years, the group has broadened its interests to include other aspects of sea turtle spatial ecology<\/span> (like the effects of environmental factors on movements or their diving behaviour), also extending its target to other long-distance navigators<\/span> such as seabirds or ducks.
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Isla Meta<\/em><\/span> (“goal island” in Spanish)\u00a0makes reference to a chapter of the book “The sea turtle, so excellent a fishe”<\/em> (1967) of the American zoologist Archie Carr (a pioneer in the studies of sea turtle migrations), in which the possible navigational systems used by sea turtles during their oceanic migrations<\/span>, are discussed. The chapter is mostly focused on the navigational cues used by those turtles which migrate towards specific targets<\/span> like a tiny island in the middle of the ocean.\u00a0 <\/span>The author especially examines the case of green turtles<\/span> (Chelonia mydas<\/em>), which shuttle between Brazil and the remote Ascension Island<\/span> in the South Atlantic Ocean: an epic migratory journey that has been reconstructed for the first time in 1997 by researchers of this group (click here <\/a>for details). <\/span>
\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Islameta Group is presently composed, beside myself, by the following people of the Department of Biology:
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Dr. Paolo Casale<\/span> (senior researcher)<\/h4>\n

Dr. Dimitri Giunchi<\/a><\/span> (researcher)<\/h4>\n

Dr. Resi Mencacci <\/span><\/span>(research technician)
\n<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

Dr. Giulia Cerritelli (post-doc).<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/h4>\n

For our research we are actively collaborating with a number of different colleagues throughout the world, among which:<\/span><\/p>\n