Pablo Valero Riquelme

Who I am

I have been working with phasmids for over thirty years — first as an enthusiast, then as a researcher. This is not a career I fell into by default; it is the passion of my life.

I was already keeping phasmids and developing an interest in entomology at the age of eight. Over time, that hobby led to formal technical training in the Department of Zoology and Physical Anthropology at the University of Murcia, while studying for a Biology degree at the same university. It was during that period that I found my first species new to science — by chance, during a lepidoptera survey in Sierra Nevada, Granada; I described it as Pijnackeria recondita Valero & Ortiz, 2015. That same passion connected me to Oskar Conle and Frank Hennemann, founders of Phasmatodea.com and two of the world's leading specialists in phasmid taxonomy. In 2016 they invited me to join an expedition in Brazil. A year later, Oskar offered me the position of running his private laboratory in Germany. I left everything behind and went.

I spent nearly eight years there. I coordinated over ten scientific expeditions to poorly or never-sampled areas of Central and South America, and worked with collections at some of the world's major natural history museums — the Natural History Museum in London, the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, and the Zoologische Staatssammlung München. What that period gave me is not just technical expertise; it is a real network of contacts with researchers and institutions across several countries, and the judgement to know exactly what is present in a given territory and what is not. When I founded New World Phasmids in early 2026, I did so to put all of that to work on concrete projects: without the timelines of the academic system, without intermediaries, with tangible results.

I am currently an associate researcher at the Zoologische Staatssammlung München and remain a collaborating researcher in the Department of Zoology and Physical Anthropology at the University of Murcia. I have published 12 articles on phasmids in international journals — including Systematic Biology, ZooKeys, European Journal of Taxonomy and Zootaxa — and described 29 species and 4 new genera for science, with dozens more pending publication in forthcoming work.

I work directly with each client from the start. There are no intermediaries: if you hire my services, you work with me.

Every project begins with a conversation to understand what you need and whether I have something concrete to offer. If I don't, I'll tell you. I'm not interested in charging for something that won't give you real results, and I don't like having my time wasted either — so I try not to waste anyone else's.

Specialising in a group as specific as phasmids is not something you can improvise. It is the result of years of direct work with the material, with collections, and in the field. That is what makes the difference when the project truly matters.