Ricercatore

Dipartimento di Biologia ed Evoluzione degli Organismi Marini

Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Villa Comunale
80121 Napoli - Italia

Curriculum vitae

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XAysNiYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Romain-Sabroux

ERCs: LS8_6 Phylogenetics, systematics, comparative biology; LS8_11 Marine biology and ecology

settori scientifico-disciplinari: BIO/05 – Zoologia - BIO/18 – Genetica

Interessi di Ricerca 

Most people live their whole lives without ever hearing about sea spiders (Pycnogonida), an early offshoot of arthropod diversity and one of the most inconspicuous dwellers of the seafloor, inhabiting our very shores down to the deepest abysses. There are approximately 1,400 known species of sea spiders, along with a few fossil species. Much remains to be discovered, and the evolutionary history of this fascinating group is still to be fully understood. They stand at a key position in the phylogeny of Arthropoda, making them central to understand the early evolution of their biological traits. But paradoxically, sea spiders have drawn very little attention from the scientific community.
As a researcher, I strive to disentangle the evolution and diversity of pycnogonids and to understand what they can teach us about arthropod evolution in general.
Here at the SZN, I focus on the sea spiders of the Mediterranean Sea, many of which were first described by our very Anton Dohrn. Through sampling, morphological taxonomy, microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and DNA barcoding, I am revising the diversity of the Gulf of Naples. Using transcriptomics and exon capture, I aim to produce original molecular datasets that will help resolve the phylogeny of the group.
I also study the r-opsin repertoire of sea spiders. The r-opsin genes are expressed in the photoreceptors of the eyes and govern vision in arthropods. Arthropods originally possessed four r-opsins, but their r-opsin repertoire has since diversified through duplications and losses, and adapted to species ecology, leading to a great diversity of r-opsins. Critically, the r-opsin repertoire of pycnogonids has never been investigated. Here at the SZN, I initiate a new program to study the r-opsin repertoire of Mediterranean sea spiders in order to replace them in the context of arthropods evolution.

Pubblicazioni 

NAVA, M.*, ÁLVAREZ-CARRETERO, S., GARWOOD, R. J. DONOGHUE, P. C. J., SABROUX, R.*, PISANI, D.* (2025). A timescale for the evolutionary history of sea spiders (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida). Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society, 4(1): kzaf001. https://doi.org/10.1093/evolinnean/kzaf001

SABROUX, R.*, GARWOOD R. J., DONOGHUE, P. C. J., PISANI, D., EDGECOMBE, G. D. (2024). New insights into the Devonian sea spiders of the Hunsrück Slate (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida). PeerJ, 12: e17766. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.17766

SABROUX, R., CORBARI, L., HASSANIN, A.* (2023). Phylogeny of sea spiders (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida) inferred from mitochondrial genome and 18S ribosomal RNA gene sequences. Molecular Phylogeny and Evolution., 182: 107726. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2023.107726

SABROUX, R.*, HASSANIN, A., CORBARI, L. (2022). Sea spiders (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida) collected during Madibenthos expedition from Martinique shallow waters. European Journal of Taxonomy, 851: 1-141. https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2022.851.1999.

SABROUX, R., HASSANIN, A., CORBARI, L.* (2019). Four times more species of sea spiders (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida) in Martinique Island (Lesser Antilles). Marine Biodiversity 49(3): 1519-1535. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-019-00957-9.