My research interests orbit around community and population ecology. Over the past eight years I have worked in projects that utilise molecular approaches to understand and safeguard aquatic biodiversity. I’ve been involved in studies of hybridization events between invasive and endemic species, development of SNP regions to study speciation events in fish species, and the reconstruction of ancient planktonic communities from sedimentary DNA.

I’ve specialised in plankton ecology in the marine environment, particularly in coastal temperate habitats. Among my expertise are integrative (DNA base and morphology-based) taxonomic analyses, High Throughput Sequencing Metabarcoding, barcoding and microsatellites. As well as field working experience in Tanzania, Galapagos and the Mediterranean Sea.

Recently, I began working with BAS as a post-doc in the Darwin plus project -Fish bycatch in the Antarctic krill fishery-, to investigate identifications uncertainties in fish species in order to develop enhanced identification tools for species that are unintentionally caught in the Krill fishery.

Publications from NERC Open Research Archive

• Romero Martinez, M., Hollyman, P., & Collins, M. (2025). Fish bycatch diversity within the Antarctic krill fishery, CCAMLR sub-areas 48.1 to 48.3, 2019-2024 (Version 1.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/9c459656-5fe4-44f7-860f-da287111016c

1. Fish by-catch in the Antarctic krill fishery

   This project is improving our understanding of fish bycatch in the Antarctic krill fishery, to help support better management and conservation.

   Read more of: Fish by-catch in the Antarctic krill fishery

   

• Marine Ecologist, Ecosystems team
• Researcher, Fisheries Society of the British Isles
• Researcher, Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography