Giovanni Forcina is a César Nombela Talent Attraction Fellow at the Zoology Unit of the University of Alcalá (Spain). He completed his PhD studies in biology at the University of Pisa (Italy) with a thesis on the evolution and conservation of galliforms. He is leading a project dealing with host-related drivers of tick-borne pathogen transmission in mice. He has worked on a number of study systems and in research groups worldwide on topics spanning from evolutionary and population genetics to wildlife forensics, from museomics to microbiomics. His teaching disciplines include zoology and animal anatomy. He is a member of academic associations in Spain and Italy. Keywords: archival DNA, biogeography, conservation, galliforms, microbiomics, small mammals