I am a researcher and naturalist, focusing on understanding how populations evolve, change under different conditions and form different species. I approach this large question on different levels, from taxonomy, to describe the diversity of life, to molecular evolution and ecological interactions, prefering always a broad view over evolutionary processes.
I am overall passionate about the natural world and its biodiversity, and deeply involved in outreach as a foundamental tool to raise people awareness. One of the tools I prefer to communicate is photography, and is one of of the things I like doing when I am not at the computer or at the microscope.
Research
The reason why I am doing research is probably because I always liked to observe insects and their amazing diversity. Taxonomy is the field of biology that names organisms and places them in the tree of life. This proceess, that includes collecting samples, describing them and giving a proper nomeclature, it’s the very first step of describing biological diversity, being the baseline of other disciplines like phylogeny, population genetics and ecology. I am specialised in the taxonomy and ecology of two families of Coleoptera, Cerambycidae and Oedemeridae. I also work on their phylogeny and conservation, with a broad view on all aspects of their biology.
Brachyta petriccionei Rapuzzi Bologna & Poloni, 2019
Speciation research is the logical step following taxonomical work. This is why I am not so surprised to see that I am currently working on speciation! Once species are described and named, and a robust classification is settled, we need to understand how they diverged, what drived their separation from their close relatives and when in the past this happened. All those questions are part of speciation research.
In this moment, I am working on the speciation and demographic history of Morpho butterflies, a beautiful genus of Amazonian butterflies.
Discover more about Morpho speciation on the OUTOFTHEBLUE project website!
Outreach
In a World that sees everyday an increasing impact of human activities on natural ecosystems, scientists are called in raising public awareness on the importance of biodiversity and healthy ecosystems for the Earth and for ourselves. That’s why I actively engage in public outreach, especially through photography, as a powerful mean of raising public awareness on the topics I study as a scientist.
Riccardo Poloni | insect evolution and ecology 