Mariana Alves Stanton

I have a bachelor degree in Biology at the from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas(2005) and a Masters degree in Ecology from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (2008) in Brazil, where I first got in touch with the study of chemical ecology and induced responses in plant-insect interactions. After this, I obtained a PhD degree in Ecology from a joint program of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (MPI-CE) and the Friedrich Schiller Universität in Jena, Germany. I also worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular Ecology at the MPI-CE from 2014-2015. During my PhD studies and my first post-doc, I had the opportunity of combining field ecology with natural history studies, analytical chemistry and molecular biology. My main focus was the study of costs and benefits of induced chemical defenses and nitrogen allocation in plants, and the use of pheromones by insect herbivores for host plant location.Currently, I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Chemistry in University of São Paulo (USP) and I am studying how chemical diversity in congeneric host plants affect the diversity of their interactions with specialist herbivores and their parasitoid natural enemies, with an emphasis on the role of volatile organic compounds emitted after herbivory. (Source: Lattes Curriculum)