Dr Giovanni Polverino

Giovanni’s project aims to investigate the role of phenotypic plasticity in the ecological success of invasive fishes over native Australian ones to predict species response to a changing world.

In addition, his research will integrate an interdisciplinary component at the interface between animal behaviour and engineering to investigate whether bioinspired robots can effectively represent a novel, autonomous, and effective solution to selectively combat invasive species in Australian freshwaters.

Giovanni completed his PhD in evolutionary biology at Humboldt University of Berlin. He is currently affiliated with UWA as an Adjunct Research Follow and a Research Fellow at both Monash University and the University of Tuscia.

Giovanni’s research was featured in Science Magazine when an international team of researchers he led discovered that common water pollutants cause fish to behave similarly to one another, blurring their behavioral fingerprints! Why it’s bad? Read his latest study here.

Video:  Dr Giovanni Polverino, the 2020 Rising Stars third prize winner, explains how he is developing a world-first robotic toolkit to control invasive mosquitofish and protect the fauna of Australia.

Video:  A team of researchers led by Dr. Polverino have developed a biologically-inspired robotic fish that protects native species from aquatic pests.

Publications

The publications that have resulted from Giovanni’s Forrest Fellowship are:

10. Falcucci G. Amati G. Fanelli P. Krastev V.K. Polverino G. Porfiri M. & Succi S. 2021. Extreme flow simulations reveal skeletal adaptations of deep-sea sponges. Nature, 595: 537-541. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03658-1

9. Polverino G. & Porfiri M. 2021. Controlling invasive species with biologically-inspired robots. https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal/35/102905

8. Polverino G, Martin JM, Bertram MG, Soman VR, Tan H, Brand JA, Mason RT, Wong BBM. 2021 Psychoactive pollution suppresses individual differences in fish behaviour. Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences.  Vol 228, Issue 1944. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.2294

7. Polverino G. 2020 The flexible young and the specialized adult: a comment on Loftus et al. Behavioral Ecology, araa087. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/araa087

6. Karakaya M, Porfiri M, Polverino G. 2020 Invasive alien species respond to biologically-inspired robotic predators. Proc. SPIE 11374, Bioinspiration, Biomimetics and Bioreplicatoin X, 113740C, 22 April 2020. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2557871

5. Tan H, Polverino G, Martin JM, Bertram MG, Wiles SC, Palacios MM, Bywater CL, White CR, Wong BBM. 2020 Chronic exposure to a pervasive pharmaceutical pollutant erodes among-individual phenotypic variation in a fish. Environmental Pollution, Vol. 263, Part A. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.114450.

4. Polverino G, Karakaya M, Spinello C, Soman VR, Porfiri M. 2019 Behavioural and life-history responses of mosquitofish to biologically inspired and interactive robotic predators. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 16: 20190359.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2019.0359

3. Gasparini C, Speechley EM, Polverino G. 2019 The bold and the sperm: positive association between boldness and sperm number in the guppy. Royal Society Open Interface. 6: 190474.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.190474

2. Polverino G, Palmas BM, Evans JP, Gasparini C. 2019 Individual plasticity in alternative reproductive tactics declines with social experience in male guppies. Animal Behaviour, Vol. 148.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2018.12.014

1. Polverino G, Santostefano F, Diaz-Gil C, Mehner T. 2018 Ecological conditions drive pace-of-life syndromes by shaping relationships between life history, physiology and behaviour in two populations of Eastern mosquitofish. Scientific Reports 8 14673.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-33047-0