Dr Gerardo Fracasso

I'm an Evolutionary Biologist mainly working in host-parasite interactions, ecology and behaviour. After a master thesis on avian olfaction (University of Padua) I explored the realm of host-parasite interactions during my PhD at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Here, I carried out a project on tick-bird interactions studying the causes and consequences of individual-based host and parasite variation (supervisors: prof. Erik Matthysen, dr. Dieter Heylen). My work on tick ecology briefly continued at the Institute of Tropical Medicine (Antwerp, Belgium) before moving to the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK). 

As a postdoc in Brighton, I applied an individual-based approach to investigate the behaviour, ecology and physiology of ground beetles (PI: prof. Wiebke Schuett and prof. Jeremy Niven). Currently, I'm a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow (UKRI funding guarantee) studying the intaction between avian hosts (mostly pheasants), ticks and their microbiome (HosTiLyme project) in the beautiful landscape of Cornwall.