Carmelo Fruciano

Carmelo Fruciano is an Associate Professor of Zoology at the University of Catania, Italy. His research focuses on phenotypic evolution, morphometrics, and evolutionary biology, particularly in fish systems. He holds a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Catania (2010) and has held appointments at institutions including the University of Konstanz, Queensland University of Technology, and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. His work combines genomics, transcriptomics, and geometric morphometrics to study adaptation and speciation. Fruciano leads a lab focused on morphometric methods and has developed R packages like GeometricMorphometricsMix and resampleWGCNA. He has received awards including the Marie Curie Fellowship (2012) and the Accademia Gioenia dissertation prize (2013).

Research Interests:

• Phenotypic evolution and integration
• Sympatric speciation mechanisms
• Geometric morphometrics methodology
• Cichlid fish adaptation
• Phenotypic plasticity

Awards:

• Doctoral dissertation prize (Accademia Gioenia, 2013)
• Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (2012)
• ARC Discovery Project (2021)

Labs/Teams:

• Fruciano Lab at the University of Catania
• Past collaborations with Axel Meyer’s lab (Konstanz) and Matt Phillips’ lab (Queensland)