Full Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The first and only black researcher at the highest level of the Brazilian scientific community. In this position, I encourage young black researchers to face the challenges and persist. I am a mother of three girls, and I love singing, dancing, and handcrafting.

Gall inducers impose metabolic stresses on their host plants, resulting in gall development, which is the focus of plant-insect interaction studies in the Neotropics. The Gall Group has been working on plant responses in structural, physiological, and chemical approaches to solving the mysteries of the establishment of these peculiar structures – the gall morphotypes – within plant tissues. We deal with the challenges of discovering new species of insects unknown to science, and as such, I have been honored with the name of two: Palaeomystella rosaemariae (Lepidoptera) and Eriogalococcus Isaias (Hemiptera). Under gall induction, plant tissues are subjected to high oxidative stress and react to it by concentrating polyphenols in the site of oviposition or larvae feeding. This new chemical environment impairs IAA-oxidase activity, resulting in a high level of IndolAcetic acid concentration, the starting point for cell and tissue responses. The symptoms are cell hypertrophy and hyperplasia. As part of the goals of the LongTerm Ecological Research on Veredas, we are focusing on the effects of the environment on the gall’s structural and physiological traits. From this perspective, we study the effects of chemical elements and humidity in the soil on host plants and their associated galls. We hypothesize that gall structure can buffer environmental stresses, but galling herbivores can alternatively manipulate plant developmental programs in specific pathways. From a teleological perspective, as black scientists, we have survived many stresses along our scientific career but cannot give up. After all, “the tide has already turned”.