Full Professor Andrea Pilastro was awarded his PhD in 1992 and since then he has not experienced any significant career interruptions. He has held post-doc fellowships from 1992 to 1998, when he took a position at the Department of Biology, University of Padova (UNIPD), Italy, as Senior Lecture, Associate Professor (2005-2010), and finally as Full Professor (2010-present). Service roles included chairing the PhD School’s in Biosciences, Univ. Padova (2014-2017) and coordinating the curriculum in Evolutionary Biology of the PhD School in Biosciences (2011-present). External service roles include membership of Editorial Boards (Anim. Behav.: 2011-2013; Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.: 2014-present). He has been member of PhD assessment committees for the University of Turin, Florence, Ferrara (Ita), Aarhus (DK), Vienna (Aut), ANU (Aus), Oxford (UK). AP teaches evolutionary biology, animal behaviour and conservation biology. Invited keynote and speaker addresses and articles AP has presented a number of invited talks at conferences (e.g. Genotype by Environment Interactions, Exeter) and Universities (e.g. University of Vienna, Austria; University of Copenhagen and of Aarhus, DK; CONICET, Puerto Madryn, Argentina; KLIVV, Vienna; University of Bern, CH; University of Krakow, PL). His research has received considerable coverage on radio, newspapers & magazines. Advancement of knowledge AP and colleagues have provided key contributions to the literature on sexual selection, evolutionary ecology and reproductive biology using a diverse range of organisms, including fishes and birds. For example, his work on guppies and other poeciliid fishes has been published in some of the most prestigious biological journals (including Nature, PNAS, Nat Comm), providing key insights into the evolution of male ornaments and the interplay between pre- and postcopulatory sexual selection. His theory (along with A. Berglund and A. Bisazza) on the dual function of male ornaments (Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 1996 58: 385-399, 654 citations on Google Scholar), for example, is presented in Futuyma’s Evolutionary Biology textbook as one of the main theories explaining the evolution of male ornaments (3rd ed., p. 593). He has developed with several colleagues (A. Bisazza, M. Rasotto) a series of techniques to male sperm allocation (e.g. Proc R Soc B 1997 264: 1125-1129; Proc R Soc B 1999 266: 1887-1891; PNAS 2002 99: 9913-9915) and to disentangle the influence of pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection on male reproductive fitness (Nature 2003 421: 360-363; Evolution 2004, 58: 665-669; Nat Comm 2015 6: 8291). Using guppies, Pilastro’s groups has also provided the first demonstration of the role of the ovarian fluid in the cryptic female choice for unrelated females (Proc R Soc B 2011, 278: 2495-2501), investigated the relationship between female condition and the effect of OF on sperm velocity (Naturwiss 2012 99: 417-420) and highlighted the cryptic female choice for MHC similarity in the guppy (Mol Ecol 2015 24: 4286-4295; Editor’s highlight: Mol Ecol 2015 24: 4039-4041). AP has also been working on the evolution of female brood desertion in the rock sparrow (e.g. Behav. Ecol. 2005 16: 435-441.) and on the evolution of female ornaments through male choice (e.g. Anim. Behav. 2005 69: 1243-1250). AP has published 130 papers, with more than 8000 citations and H-index = 52 (Google Scholar).

Curriculum PDF File

Topics of master projects in Pilastro's lab include 1) interaction between pre- and postcopulatory episodes of sexual selection in determining male reproductive success; 2) the role of animal personalities in sexual selection; 3) the role of anticipatory plasticity in sexual behaviour in determining sexual selection trajectories. All these studies are done on our Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) fish from a seminatural population at the Botanical Garden of the University of Padova. Experiments are conducted at the Department of Biology.

Last update: 02/07/2025