Interested in all things natural for as long as I remember. As a schoolboy, I used to collect plants, mollusk shells, insects, rocks and minerals, fossils, and whatnot else. First trained as an ecologist in my hometown Bryansk, Russia, then with a candidate's degree (roughly equal to PhD) in entomology at St. Petersburg State University. Over the last ten years, my research has mostly revolved around the evolution of seasonal life cycles in insects, including temperature and photoperiodic responses, inter- and intraspecific differences in developmental rate, etc. When free from university work, I can oftentimes be found hiking or traveling somewhere in the wild or tending my collection of (mostly) carnivorous plants.