  Among the possible alternatives to the standard cosmological model
($\Lambda$CDM), coupled Dark Energy models postulate that Dark Energy (DE),
seen as a dynamical scalar field, may interact with Dark Matter (DM), giving
rise to a "fifth-force", felt by DM particles only. In this paper, we study the
impact of these cosmologies on the statistical properties of galaxy populations
by combining high-resolution numerical simulations with semi-analytic models
(SAM) of galaxy formation and evolution. New features have been implemented in
the reference SAM in order to have it run self-consistently and calibrated on
these cosmological simulations. They include an appropriate modification of the
mass temperature relation and of the baryon fraction in DM haloes, due to the
different virial scalings and to the gravitational bias, respectively. Our
results show that the predictions of our coupled-DE SAM do not differ
significantly from theoretical predictions obtained with standard SAMs applied
to a reference $\Lambda$CDM simulation, implying that the statistical
properties of galaxies provide only a weak probe for these alternative
cosmological models. On the other hand, we show that both galaxy bias and the
galaxy pairwise velocity distribution are sensitive to coupled DE models: this
implies that these probes might be successfully applied to disentangle among
quintessence, $f(R)$-Gravity and coupled DE models.

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics