I received a PhD in Ecology of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) from the University of Coimbra in 2011 and I am currently working in the IBBC group of cE3c. In the last 10 years, I have developed pioneering work on the structure of AMF community in different ecosystems of Azores (forest, grassland, agriculture). During the PhD entitled "Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal Diversity and Composition in pastures of Azores: assessing the impact of management practices" funded by FCT (SFRH/BD/18355/2004) I evaluated the AMF diversity and composition in semi-natural and intensive pastures of Terceira Island. Since 2012, under a postdoctoral fellowship funded by FCT (SFRH/BPD/78059/2011) I developed at the Centre of Biotechnology of the Azores (CBA) the project “Restoration of Azorean ecosystems through application of native arbuscular mycorrhizas” to characterise the AMF community associated to endemic plants Juniperus brevifolia and Picconia azorica, in the perspective of using AMF as inoculants to micropropagated endemic plants, to overcome the stress conditions of these plants in acclimatisation and transplantation phases. Simultaneously, I coordinated all the tasks of the project “Diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in native forest of the Azores and their biotechnological application funded by FCT (PTDC /AGR-ALI/122152/2010)”. With this project, I supervised the PhD thesis of Sara Patrícia Bettencourt Luna (M3.1.2/F/041/2011) entitled "Study of the interaction mechanisms between Azores endemic woody plant-arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF)". The output of the mycorrhizal projects able me to renew the postdoctoral fellowship to the second triennium (SFRH/BPD/78059/2011), with the project “Solving the Linnean Shortfall in Azorean arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: the description of new species in the ecosystem of the endangered endemic woody plants Picconia azorica and Juniperus brevifolia” funded by FCT, and developed in cE3c (Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes) and Centre for Functional Ecology (CEF). The ecological analyse of AMF community structure contributed to advising their application for more sustainable agriculture, by training courses for conventional and organic farmers, and my participation as an advisory member of the project Living Lab Research concept in rural areas (LIVERUR), a pioneer project based on the sustainable agriculture of the circular. Moreover, mentoring actions for the production of native inoculum to agriculture lead me to a granted patent. Given my skills in AMF ecology in different types of insular habitats, I was invited to the leader of the group - Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (FMA), taxonomy, distribution and functional traits in the native forest of Azores on AZORESBIOPORTAL - PROBIOTA (ACORES-01-0145-FEDER-000072). Currently, mycorrhizal diversity has only been studied in the Terceira and São Miguel Islands. In order to contribute to a better knowledge of the mycorrhizal diversity in the Azores archipelago, the AZORESBIOPORTAL group intends to carry out an expedition to islands geologically different. AZORESBIOPORTAL is the unique resource for fundamental research in systematics, biodiversity, education and conservation management in the Azores (Portugal), and provides an original platform for biogeographical and macroecological research on islands. At the moment, I am a contracted postdoc of the PASTURCLIM project that aims to study the possible effects of climate change on the productivity and nutrient composition of the pastures in the Azores, to answer the societal challenge of adaptation to climatic change. I am currently collaborating with some overlapping groups of colleagues especially working on AMF ecology, evolution and conservation - Centre for Functional Ecology (CFE), University of Coimbra (Helena Freitas and Susana Rodríguez-Echeverría), Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (Christopher Walker) and Institute of Botany ASCR – (Claudia Kruger).