LATEST NEWS:
Oct 2025
Luna joins the lab
Welcome our latest PhD student, Luna Dudine.
She is enthusiast about cognition, and her PhD project will revolve around that and multiple stressor using guppy as a model system. 


Aug 2025
Something to read
if you have 5 min, read this:
www.the-scientist.com/how-cryptic-female-choice-shapes-the-evolution-of-species-73038
I was interviewed (along with other expert) on cryptic female choice. 

July 2025
Lab news – it's been a while!
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It’s been almost two years since I last updated this section.. which probably says something about how busy (and occasionally overwhelming) academic life can get. In the meantime, a lot has happened. One of the most meaningful things was having Eugenia Zandonà (from Brasil) with us for over a year during her sabbatical. Eugenia left in December and we miss her a lot, both for the science chats and the non science chats..  that are just as important :) More recently, we had two short visits that made the lab feel a bit more international: Lily Amos, PhD student in Liam Dougherty’s lab in Liverpool, came over to kickstart a project on female choice in zebrafish, and  Marissa Cartee, who is doing her PhD with David Reznick, stopped by to learn more about our work on gametes and female reproductive fluid. It was lovely to have both of them around. Hosting visitors always brings a breath of fresh air and great conversations, we hope they enjoyed their time here as much as we did.

The PRIN project on wild mosquitofish populations exposed to PFAS (in collaboration with Marianna Pauletto [UNIPD, Department of Comparative Biomedicine], Giovanni Polverino [UNITU], and Andrea Barbarossa [UNIBO]) is wrapping up. Francesco has been staring at mosquitofish under the microscope for so long that he probably won’t want to see another Gambusia anytime soon. 
We’re also working on an small but promising project on microbiome and fertility in guppies, with Marco Graziano and Maria Elena Martino (from UNIPD).

And finally, here are three new papers we’ve recently published on heatwaves. We've been working on this for a while, and (without really planning it), three of our papers came out almost at the same time! They all look at short-term heat stress and how it affects different traits — development, behaviour, cognition. We worked with guppies and zebrafish, from embryos to adults. Big thanks to Merel Breedveld, Náya Álvarez Quintero, and many others who made these projects possible.
– Heat stress during embryonic development: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtherbio.2025.104195
– Heatwaves and anti-predator behaviour in juveniles: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.71447
– Heatwaves and (various) cognitive traits in adults: https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/araf061


Oct 2023
The last few months have been intense. Maria has gone to start a fantastic new work opportunity in Vien, Austria, but connection will always be in place with Maria. It was such a pleasure to work with her.. and we still have to publish some of the fantastic work she has done with the zebrafish!

Last week we had also a lot of fun showing off our research at Science4all organized by UNIPD. Our cockroaches and the online quiz were the highlights that a lot of people enjoyed, and the memo game.. well, always a win win with the little animal lovers. 

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Nov 2022
New publications!
Two very exciting papers have been published recently. Check them out in the publication page!
. One if the first paper from our PhD student Livia Pinzoni who has done a marvellous job investigating the effects of the female reproductive fluid in zebrafish on the eggs and how this may have important ramification for multiple paternity! It is online as accepted paper in Am Nat, and will be included in spring 2023 in a special issue on sexual selection.
. The second paper is lead by Maria Santancà who she light on something oftne forgotten when studying mate choice in external fertilizers. The paper investigated the reproductive timing of the zebrafish, starting from the last spawn. Interesting is how female premating choice can be affected if not tested at the right timing. it has been published in Beh Ecol Soc. 
Sept 2022
Outreach and fun!
The group had a lot of fun putting together some interesting games and activity for the Science 4 all event organized by the University of Padova. We were at the botanical garden showing guppies and cockroaches, and challenging people to guess couples (on sexual dimorphism) and match the sperm! it was fun and we look forward to doing it again next year!
Aug 2022
Updates
I realize that I haven't updated the feed on this website in a while. Apologies, all my fault.  I've been busy lately, as I had a baby, so pretty good reason, I reckon! Still dealing with sleepless nights :) but back to full time work. In the meanwhile the lab group has gone on doing amazing research and I will update you more on the results we have produced recently and what is happening in the lab soon. 
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Jul 2022
ISBE 2022
Many of us (not me though) are going to present at the ISBE in Stockholm. If you want to hear more about sperm chemoattraction (and a cool device) listen to Alessandro's talk, hear about female receptivity and  MHC-related mate choice in zebrafish from Maria, and about female reproductive fluid and its effect on post-mating sexual selection from Livia !
 
Sept 2021
Hello and goodbyes

Welcome to the group to Maria (post-doc) who will work with the zebrafish team, and goodbye to Silvia who is moving to Germany for new exciting scientific adventures!

Jan 2021
We are growing

Exciting times in the lab! Merel has joined the lab and will start soon her project looking at the effect on heatwaves on fertility, sexual selection, and transgenerational effects using the guppy as a model system. 
Sperm selection project with zebrafish is been delayed with the COVID restrictions, but is proceeding well and we will get there!! 

Happy to year to everyone, stay safe!
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Oct 2020
New publication !!
Do you want to know everything (or a lot?) about the role of female reproductive fluid in sexual selection? Read this!
link
Gasparini C, Pilastro A, Evans JP. (2020) The role of female reproductive fluid in sperm competition. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B
375: 20200077. 
July 2020
We are growing !
Alessandro Devigili just joined us on the zebrafish sperm selection project financed by STARS@UNIPD. Can any PI be happier than me now ?! Don't think so.. :)
Also, Livia Pinzoni is part of the team as co-supervised PhD student working on marine and freshwater fishes. 
Difficult times for everyone, but very happy to have this fantastic team to work with.

Not the best photo of us, perhaps, but well socially distanced! 
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​April 2020

In the middle of Coronavirus emergency.. two good news to cheer us up!

First, Gasparini's lab has started to conquer the world.. oops.. no.. I mean... Silvia Cattelan has joined me in the new adventure with the Zebrafish research line. I'm so happy, that for a sec I can forget that we are all in lock-down, so I'm afraid there will not be much data in the first part of the project, but plenty of time to think and plan for when we can go back.. we'll conquer the world! .. oops.. again... I mean, we'll do our best to bring some light on the role of female reproductive fluid on sexual selection and fertilization mechanisms.

And a new paper is out in JEB on the transcriptomic of the female reproductive tract after ejaculate contact (through artificial insemination). We found that there is a decrease in the expression of immune-related genes shortly after insemination. Surely some interesting avenues for the future to understand what that means in terms of sexual selection/sexual conflict.  
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jeb.13614 

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December 2019
grant announcement!
I'm very happy to share the new that I've got a fantastic grant from UNIPD (STARS@UNIPD) to keep doing my research on sperm selection in zebrafish! starting very soon... read more about the scheme here and here. 


June 2019
Click here to read my short interview for the DiBio Department 
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June 2019
Very productive (lucky?!) period, this one! the last paper out is our first on zebrafish, where we demonstrated the effect of ovarian fluid on sperm traits and moreover that this effect is male x female dependent. This opens up a lot of exciting future research in post-mating sexual selection using this species. Stay tuned!

Federica Poli, Simone Immler, Clelia Gasparini (2019). Effects of ovarian fluid on sperm traits and its implications for cryptic female choice in zebrafish, Behavioral Ecology 30(5)  1298–1305

link here: https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arz077

May 2019
Exciting time! I have started as associate editor at Functional Ecology (https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/13652435/editorial-board/associate-editor-profiles#CGasparini). Send me all your beautiful manuscripts :)

April 2019
I have officially moved!
I'm very happy to share the news that I have taken up a new position as Associate Professor (tenure track) at UNIPD (University of Padova), where I'm excited to keep on working on my research projects, start teaching, and collaborate with awesome new (and old) colleaugues.
The group is therefore (sadly) now shrinked back to one (me), but I'm applying for grants and opportunities to establish my new group here. If you wish to join me please keep in touch, I'm open to give support to prepare applications to come here, or stay tuned for when (fingers crossed) I'll have some fundings to hire someone !

Oct 2018
Paper out in PROCB from my DECRA fellowship.
Distribution of paternity between naturally mated and artificially inseminated females. Look at the difference!
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/1888/20181505

June 2018
Our paper on paternal effects of sperm ageing in guppy is among the most read in Evolution letters !!
April 2018
Giovanni Polverino has arrived from Berlin in Perth, joining the CEB as Forrest postdoc fellow, working closely with me and Jon Evans. I'm looking forward to this fruitful collaboration!