During the last decades, anthropic activities exacerbated the resource exploitation in our biosphere, generating critical disruptions in both the state and functioning of ecosystems at different spatio-temporal scales, made evident by intense deforestations, air, soil, fresh and marine water pollution, and by the significant and progressive erosion of biodiversity.

These scenarios call for basic and applied research to improve our knowledge, awareness and provide novel sustainable approaches for environmental management. Our Biosciences and V.M. school is supporting research activities investigating the effects of climate changes and anthropic impacts on biodiversity and functional variability, to describe and understand the adaptive responses that could occur at the different levels of biological organization (molecular/cellular, individual, population, ecosystem) by a multi-disciplinary approach that involves taxonomic and functional inventories conducted using both classical and novel -omic techniques.

In this respect, the integration of different disciplines is strategic to allow the early detection of alterations occurring at the different levels of complexity and guide the implementation of conservation strategies and sustainable usage of natural resources.