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.
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!
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!
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
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
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
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 !
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!