Mikhail Potapov was born on 7 January 1963 in Moscow, USSR. In 1985, he graduated from the
Biology and Chemistry Faculty of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute named after V. I. Lenin (MGPI, now
MPGU). Since 1981, under the guidance of Professor
Nina Mikhailovna Chernova, he specialized in the systematics of
springtails, studying them on expeditions to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Mordovia, the Volga region, Lithuania, and other regions of the USSR. Since 1985, he worked in the problem laboratory "Dynamics of Populations and Reproduction of Useful Species" at MGPI, simultaneously being a postgraduate student in the Department of Zoology and Darwinism, Biology and Chemistry Faculty, MGPI. In 1989, he was inducted as a member of the
Russian Entomological Society. In 1992, he defended his
Candidate of Sciences dissertation on "The Structure of the Genus and Species Characteristics in Springtails of the Family
Isotomidae". Since 1993, he has been a Senior
Researcher at the Educational and Scientific Biological Center of the
Moscow Pedagogical State University (MPGU). Since 2009 — Leading Researcher at the Educational and Scientific Center for Ecology and Biodiversity of
MPGU. In 2012, he participated in the international project "Springtails of the Pacific Littoral of Asia". In January 2020, at a meeting of the Moscow Ethological Seminar, he gave a lecture on "The Sexual Behavior of Springtails". == Scientific Contribution ==