Maria is a conservation scientist with a passion for wildlife, science, and the wilderness, and a lifelong interest in carnivore ecology and human-wildlife interactions. She has a background in agronomical studies and graduated with an MSc in Environmental Biology at the School of Biology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her thesis was conducted at the mountains of Pindos in Greece where she developed and tested a new method for the classification-identification of individual brown bears using footprint biometric data. Since then, Maria has worked as a freelance expert on large carnivores and worked in several conservation and monitoring projects in Greece and elsewhere (French Guiana, Peru, Albania). She returned to University in 2018 to pursue her Ph.D. in wolf ecology and human-large carnivore conflict mitigation in Greece, under a State Scholarship Foundation grant (IKY). For her Ph.D., she is conducting her work using an interdisciplinary approach that combines field-based ecological sampling (camera trapping, diet analysis) and social surveys (face-to-face interviews with livestock farmers) to better understand the causes of wolf-human conflicts.
PhD student at University of Ioannina, Greece
Co-advised by: Vassiliki (Kiki) Kati (University of Ioannina, Greece), Olivier Gimenez (CNRS, CEFE, Montpellier, France)
Education
Msc: Environmental Biology, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
BS: Agriculture (Field Crops & Ecology), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Publications
Petridou M., Youlatos D., Lazarou Y., Selinides K., Pylidis C., Giannakopoulos A., Kati V & Iliopoulos Y. 2019. Wolf diet and livestock selection in central Greece. Mammalia journal 83(6): 530.
Iliopoulos Y., Astaras C., Lazarou Y., Petridou M., Kazatzidis S. & Waltert M. 2019 Tools for coexistence: Fladry corrals repel efficiently wild wolves (Canis lupus) from experimental baiting sites. Wildlife Research journal 46(6).
Giannakopoulos A., Iliopoulos Y., Petridou M., Mertzanis Y. et al. (2017). Livestock Guarding Dogs in Greece: Practical conservation measures to minimize human-carnivore conflicts. Carnivore Damage Prevention News 16: 23-33.
Petridou M., Sgardelis S.,Youlatos D., Mertzanis Y., Alibhai S.K. & Jewell Z.C. (2008). Greece: an attempt to identify individual brown bears from their footprints. International Bear News, 17(3): 16-17
Selected Reports
Petridou M., Pappas A., Papaioannou H., Kati V. (2019). Assessing the distributon and relative abundance of large mammals using camera traps in the Aoos river basin, Greece. In: Kati V., Petridou M., Theodoropoulos Y., Bukas N. Contributon to biodiversity knowledge of Aoos catchment /Greece, Pindos Perivallontiki, pp 65
Petridou M., Iliopoulos Y., Kati V. (2019). Wolf-livestock conflict in Tzoumerka National Park and comparisons with other protected areas of Greece. University of Ioannina and WWF Greece. Ioannina, Greece, pp. 51.
BENSON LAB 