Catalogo dei Corsi di studio

PROF. LORETO ROSSI

Department of Environmental Biology,
Laboratory of Trophic Ecology, via dei Sardi 70, 00185 Roma (It). loreto.rossi@uniroma1.it Tel. cell. +39.3389454496
CV synopsis
ROSSI Loreto
He is full professor of Ecology at the “Sapienza” University of Rome. He is biologist with four decades research experience in the field of trophic ecology with particular emphasis on food niche, food webs and decomposition in detritus-based systems. He was principal investigator in pioneering studies concerning the relationships between plant detritus, microorganisms, detritivores, and fishes in water systems (fresh waters, coastal sea, transitional waters and rivers). At present the same research issues are addressed in terrestrial ecosystems. The principal focus of Rossi’s research is biodiversity-functioning relationships in food web (multi-trophic communities), structured by both competition and consumer-resource interactions, in which decomposition measures the ecosystem functioning. The results obtained also by stable isotope analysis emphasize a number of intriguing features about the detritus and water systems:
(i) fungi colonising leaf detritus form a mosaic of food items crucial in the source partitioning and coexistence among detritivorous species. This provides an ideal model system for investigating competition, food web and diversity-functioning relationships; (ii) The ratio between generalist/specialist phenotypes of intermediate species along food chains explain the mean short chain length in the web reconciling conflicting hypotheses; (iii) Predator influences the prey vagility and nutrient transferiment along food chain; (iv) Decomposition rates of leaf detritus are (geostatistically) spatial dependent; this dependence is broken by disturbance providing “seascape” useful to monitor and manage brackish and inland water systems; (v) Transgenic corn shows δ15N and δ13C different from its isogenic and this difference is reverberated to detritivores that can operate as indicators of transgenic crops in field and the organization of biodiversity in food web is sensitive to Bt-protein. (vi) In aquatic and terrestrial food webs, linkage density, assessed by Stable Isotops, which was found to be directly correlated to niche width, increased with the total number of species in terrestrial webs, whereas it did not change significantly in aquatic ones, where connectance scaled negatively with the total number of species with important implications in community stability; (vii) In coastal sea and transitional water systems variations of δ15N in Ulva lactuca and Perilython indicate organic vs. inorganic Nitrogen pollution.
He has published more than 200 scientific papers in national and international journals (84 in Scopus, all in the first quartile Q1, with 25 H) (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Oikos, Evolution, Mycologia, Functional Ecology, Oecologia, Hydrobiologia, Marine Ecology Progress series, Tropical ecology, Aquatic Science, Aquatic conservation, Applied Soil Ecology, Marine Pollution Bulletin, PlosOne, Ecological Complexity, Ecological Indicators, etc.) and he is responsible for Italian versions of a number of university textbooks for ecology. He was visiting professor at UNC (North Carolina, USA-1979), and scientist at Glasgow and at Sheffield Universities (UK) (1983, 1985). Rossi has coordinated national and international research programmes in Italy and UK and numerous post-doctors/visiting professors have worked in his lab. He was the coordinator of doctorate courses in Fundamental Ecology and the tutor of 30 PhD students. At 1985 received the thalassography-hydrobiology award from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
He has recently been the principal scientist in competitive calls: Miur-PRIN programs, European Community Programmes and Antarctic Research Programmes on the biodiversity-functioning relationships. At present Prof. Rossi is studying food-webs in mangrove, water systems (Malaysia), agroecosystem based on transgenic corncrops and Antarctic Sea climatic change effects using C and N stable isotopes. Geostatistical mapping of ecosystem functioning (i.e. decomposition) using satellite imagery was developed and applied to environmental impact assessment. He is in the editorial board of Ecological Indicators and of Ecological Processes. Rossi published many papers dealing with stable isotope analysis in food web and biological indicators.
He teachs Experimental and Applied Ecology (Master course in Ecobiology). He was the principal proponent and at vice present is the vice President of the master course in EcoBiology at Sapienza University of Rome.
Training and mentoring students: I attempt to train students following my approach to research. The training for graduate students is based on the identification of important questions and learning how to go about answering them. Once the solutions are at hand, then we make a step back and look at how results fit into the relate theory. I think that the duality of this approach encourages the depth of analysis and the breadth of perspective. I require students to study trophic ecology but not particular taxa. What I look for is a passion for ecology and for quantitative reasoning.
RESEARCH GROUP (Trophic Ecology)
Group leader: PROF: LORETO ROSSI