My name is Giulio Montanaro and I am an Italian, early-career evolutionary biologist. Since childhood, I have been fascinated by nature and wildlife, and I used to spend countless hours collecting insects in the hills near my hometown. I completed my Bachelor's in Biology at the University of Padova between 2017 and 2020. During that period, I published my first papers on beetle faunistics as an independent researcher and joined the Association Catharsius, a francophone organization dedicated to African dung beetles, where I now serve as webmaster. I then obtained my MSc in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Padova (2020-2022), with a thesis on the dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) of the Tanzanian Eastern Arc Mountains. I did my MSc traineeship at the Finnish Museum of Natural History (Helsinki, Finland) in the lab of Sergei Tarasov, a world leading expert in dung beetle evolution. I continued working in Helsinki for nine months as a research assistant, an experience that resulted in several papers published in collaboration with international scientists or alone. This also inspired me to initiate an independent project on the Scarabaeinae of the Eastern Arc Mountains, which I am currently pursuing with several colleagues and is the foundation of the project proposed to TAWIRI. For the past two years, I have been a research fellow at the Orto Botanico of the University of Padova, studying faunistics and taxonomy of the butterflies of northeastern Italy, while continuing my work on dung beetles. My research currently focuses on insect – especially dung beetle – diversity and evolution and is carried out with multiple methodological approaches (morphological and molecular taxonomy, phylogenetics, ontology-based languages, etc.). I (co)authored 15 publications in international journals including the descriptions of 6 new dung beetle species. I would describe myself as an enthusiastic and curious person, always eager to learn and to contribute to scientific research, especially on the documentation and conservation of African biodiversity, with which I fell in love. For further details, please refer to my CV attached to the project proposal.