ODU Presents Lectures Series featuring Gustav Paulay, Ph.D.

ODU Presents: Lytton J. Musselman Natural History

Gustav Paulay, Ph.D.

Curator of Malacology, Florida Museum of Natural History at University of Florida

Gustav Paulay is curator of marine invertebrates at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. His research focuses on documenting marine biodiversity and studying the mechanisms of diversification - how species arise and how diversity builds up on local and global scales. He has studied coastal invertebrates around the world, but focuses on tropical reefs.

Paulay has worked with teams of taxonomists and students to document invertebrates at locations including the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Australia, New Caledonia, Lesser Antilles, Philippines and Florida. They have photographed and preserved specimens and taken tissue samples for DNA sequencing. These efforts have built up one of the largest collections of tropical invertebrates, which has been studied by a large network of taxonomic specialists.

His long-term goals include documenting the species diversity of reef (and other) invertebrates, and making this knowledge widely accessible online and through publications.