Joachim Mergeay is a senior researcher at the Research Institute for Nature and Forest in Belgium, which is the independent research institute of the Flemish government that underpins and evaluates biodiversity policy and management. He is also a part time lecturer in population and conservation genetics at the University of Leuven.
"My research mainly deals with applied population genetics and conservation genomics, with an important focus on implementation of genetic criteria into international conservation policy (European Habitats Directive, Convention on Biological Diversity), and using genetic principles to define and evaluate the conservation status of species and habitats. This is done in close collaboration with international scientific networks and IUCN specialist groups.
We use conservation genomics in a variety of species (reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, fish, insects, angiosperms, …) to estimate effective population sizes, evaluate the success of conservation translocations, and monitor invasive species."
