Gabriel Borba

IGC FELLOW    |   Global Change Center

Ph.D. Student  •   Fish and Wildlife Conservation

Research Interests: climate change, habitat loss and overfishing

Advisor: Dr. Leandro Castello

gabrielborba@vt.edu 

Gabriel Borba has a bachelor’s degree in Biology from the Federal University of Rio Grande, Brazil working with stable isotopes on freshwater fish. He also holds a masters degree in Ecology from the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), Manaus, Brazil focusing on fish ecology by studying fish assemblage dynamics of Amazonian streams along the years under climate changes.

During the 4 years between finishing his Masters and beginning a PhD program, Gabriel worked at INPA as a technical researcher responsible for logistics and monitoring to recover polluted urban streams and working with fish data from Amazonian streams and floodplain areas. 

In his PhD program, Borba will be working with Dr. Leandro Castello to investigate how future potential climate change and floodplain deforestation will affect the hydrology of Amazon rivers and fish habitat, and in turn, impact fish catch. His principal goal is to highlight the need to quantify such impacts in order to develop climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, incorporating social, policy, economics, and science communication aspects in his research topic.

Gabriel was always fascinated by nature, especially by water, growing up in a small town surrounded by nature. As a child, he observed water flow and the life within the ecosystem. He is most concerned about the changes in the precipitation regime (which controls most of the dynamics of the large rivers) impacting fish assemblages and the livelihood of millions of people around the world, as fish is the main food source for Amazonian communities. 

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Borba, Gabriel C.; Costa, Flávia R. C.; Espírito-Santo, Helder; Dias, Murilo; Leitão, Rafael; Zuanon, Jansen. Temporal changes in rainfall affect the taxonomic and functional composition of stream fish assemblages in the central Amazonia. 2020. Freshwater Biology. DOI:10.1111/fwb.13675

Costa, Flávia R. C.; Zuanon, Jansen; Baccaro, Fabricio B.; Schietti, Juliana A.; Menger, Juliana; Souza, Jorge L. P.; Borba, Gabriel C.; Esteban, Erick J. Lavado; Bertin, Vinicius M.; Gerolamo, Caian; Nogueira, Anselmo; Castilho, Carolina. 2020. Effects of climate change on central Amazonian forests: A two decades synthesis of monitoring tropical biodiversity. Oecology Australis. DOI: 10.4257/oeco.2020.2402.07

Farago, Thatyla; Amadio, Sidineia; Borba, Gabriel C.; Oliveira, Joicyeny; Val, Adalberto; Santos, Geraldo; Ferreira, Efrem. Diet and morphological structures associated with feeding in four fish species of the family Curimatidae. 2020. Web Ecology. DOI:10.5194/we-20-133-2020

Silva, Elmo Pereira; Borba, Gabriel C.; Magalhães, Célio; Zuanon, Jansen; Magnusson, William E. 2019. Habitat segregation among freshwater shrimp species in an Amazonian rainforest stream system. Freshwater Biology. DOI: 10.1111/fwb.13458