Researcher
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Villa Comunale 80121 Napoli - Italia
Department of Research Infrastructure for Marine Biological Resources (RIMAR)
e-mail:roberta.piredda(at)szn.it
Research Interests
My research lines are mainly focus on in the application of DNA barcoding and metabarcoding approaches to study biodiversity. of marine communities. Application of environmental DNA (eDNA) to study the dynamics of marine communities, from bacteria to metazoan, at spatial and temporal scales, also with the integration of environmental parameters, morphological, functional and geographic data. My interests also include the use of molecular approaches for the traceability and identification of fish also in complex seafood products and the study and use of fish host-microbiome also as tool to trace geographic origin. My skills include the generation of pipelines for ecological analyses of metabarcoding of eukaryotic and prokaryotic, ecological network, curation of barcode reference databases, design and test in silico of primer pairs, evolutionary approaches with generation of phylogenetic trees and haplotype networks.
Selected Publications
Cardoni, S., Piredda, R., Grimm, G. W., Santorsola, M., Schulze, E. D., Denk, T., ... & Simeone, M. C. (2025). Pruning the Tree: Comparing OTUs and ASVs in High‐Throughput Sequencing of 5S‐IGS Nuclear Ribosomal DNA in Phylogenetic Studies. Ecology and Evolution, 15(10), e72242.
Di Capua, I., Luise, F., Zampicinini, G., Roncalli, V., Carotenuto, Y., & Piredda, R. (2024). Integrative approach to monitoring metazoan diversity and distribution in two Mediterranean coastal sites through morphology and organismal eDNA. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 19291.
Lorusso, L., Piredda, R., Mottola, A., Intermite, C., Ranieri, L., Carpino, S., & Di Pinto, A. (2024). Authentication of seafood species on the ASFIS list (FAO) by in-silico evaluation of primers for metabarcoding. Food Control, 110663.
Piredda, R., Mottola, A., Lorusso, L., Ranieri, L., Catanese, G., Cipriano, G., ... & Di Pinto, A. (2023). Microbiome-based study in wild-caught Scomber scombrus fish products at the end of the supply chain. LWT, 186, 115264.
Quero, G. M., Piredda, R., Basili, M., Maricchiolo, G., Mirto, S., Manini, E., ... & Luna, G. M. (2023). Host-associated and environmental microbiomes in an open-sea mediterranean gilthead sea bream fish farm. Microbial Ecology, 86(2), 1319-1330. (First co-author)
Pascoal, F., Tomasino, M. P., Piredda, R., Quero, G. M., Torgo, L., Poulain, J., ... & Magalhães, C. (2023). Inter-comparison of marine microbiome sampling protocols. ISME communications, 3(1), 84.
Piredda, R., Mottola, A., Cipriano, G., Carlucci, R., Ciccarese, G., & Di Pinto, A. (2022). Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) approach applied to species identification in mixed processed seafood products. Food Control, 133, 108590.
Di Capua, I., Piredda, R., Mazzocchi, M. G., & Zingone, A. (2021). Metazoan diversity and seasonality through eDNA metabarcoding at a Mediterranean long-term ecological research site. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 78(9), 3303-3316. (First co-author)
Minicante, S. A., Piredda, R., Quero, G. M., Finotto, S., Aubry, F. B., Bastianini, M., ... & Zingone, A. (2019). Habitat heterogeneity and connectivity: effects on the planktonic protist community structure at two adjacent coastal sites (the Lagoon and the Gulf of Venice, Northern Adriatic Sea, Italy) revealed by metabarcoding. Frontiers in microbiology, 10, 2736. (First co-author)
Piredda, R., Claverie, J. M., Decelle, J., De Vargas, C., Dunthorn, M., Edvardsen, B., ... & Massana, R. (2018). Diatom diversity through HTS-metabarcoding in coastal European seas. Scientific reports, 8(1), 18059.
