Research activities in the area of Environmental Biology are addressed at both basic and applied activities, and are focused on topics fundamental for the analysis and management of natural and anthropic habitats. In particular, research activities are focused on the basic understanding of interactions between living organisms and their environment, and at applying this knowledge to the analysis and modeling of the impact of environmental changes on ecosystems composition, stability and related ecological and economic issues.
Among the main research streams of the Environmental Biology unit, it is worth citing biomonitoring activities both in marine and terrestrial habitats, development and application of plant ecophysiology to the analysis of the impact of global change on forest ecosystems and ecology of urban areas and related mitigation techniques, functional genomics applied to Ecology and Taxonomy comparative immunology applied to management strategies of  invasive species, marine ecology studies spanning from trophic cycles to fisheries management, analysis of biodiversity from molecular to ecosystem levels, and finally biodiversity informatics, addressed at developing digital systems for species  identification mainly devoted to citizen science activities.