Board of Nudibranch Experts
As you may already knew, Nudi Pixel is not a bunch of nudibranch experts, we are simply a group of nudibranch enthusiasts. Although we work very hard to identify every nudibranch photographs submitted to this site, we think some advisory from the experts on the field would be necesssary. Here the list of some nubranch experts who help us to identify the species of your sea slugs/ nudibranchs.
Dr. Richard C. Willan has been studying nudibranchs for almost 40 years. He obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Auckland studying the taxonomy and ecology of side-gilled sea slugs and sea hares. He then crossed the "ditch" as the Tasman Sea is popularly called to join the staff of the Zoology Department at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. After 12 years there, he moved into the tropics to take up the Curatorship in Molluscs at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern T... Read more
Dr. Nathalie Yonow has been studying opisthobranchs for over 20 years, following an obsession with marine biology since a child living in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Greece, and Wales. She earned both her B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Swansea University (Wales, United Kingdom). Her undergraduate thesis was on the marine biology of a small reef in Sri Lanka, and her Ph.D. on Acteon tornatilis, a primitive shelled opishtobranch living on a local (Welsh!) sandy shore. She has since been invited on a number ... Read more
He has studied nudibranchs for more than 40 years, with main interests in taxonomy, nomenclature, and feeding preferences. He obtained his B.Sc. in 1970 from California Polytechnic State University; & M.A. in 1978 from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. He was a marine biologist and computer specialist at Long Marine Laboratory, University of California at Santa Cruz, from 1976 to 2007. He retired in 2007 and is now a Research Fellow at Long Marine Laboratory. His interests include “macro photogr... Read more
Senior Curator and Senior Officer for Collaborative Programs
California Academy of Sciences
Dr. Terrence M. Gosliner received an A.B. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in Biological. His Master’s Degree is from the University of Hawaii in Zoology and his PhD. is from the University of New Hampshire. He taught Zoology at the University of New Hampshire and served as Chief Professional Officer at the South African Museum in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a Fellow of the Calif... Read more
Veteran diver and underwater photographer who has been practicing marine biology since 1974. David W. Behrens has become a household name for Nudibranch enthusiasts, having authored his Nudibranch Behavior, Pacific Coast Nudibranchs, and co-authored Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific, Eastern Pacific Nudibranchs, Diving and Snorkeling Honduras' Bay Islands and The Diving Guide - Cozumel, Cancun & the Riviera Maya. His scientific publications on this group of amazing animals numbers over 80,... Read more
Dr. Marta Pola obtained her B.Sc and Ph.D from the University Autonoma of Madrid (Spain) studying the taxonomy and phylogeny of the nudibranch subfamily Nembrothinae based both on morphological and molecular data. At present, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California, working on the taxonomy and the evolutionary relationships of different groups of sea slugs. She is an active diver who started diving in the temperate waters of Spain, but thes... Read more
Scott Johnson grew up in the Marshall Islands and has had a nudibranch addiction since 1976, when he started shooting macro photography in Hawaii and noticed all the different slugs you could see by looking small.
He studied nudibranch population biology and ecology at the University of Hawaii and published, with Hans Bertsch, a small photo book on Hawaiian nudibranchs in 1981. Who would have thought way back then that a nudibranch book would sell?
He spent several years in the early 198... Read more
Dr. Felix Lorenz studied and lectured at the Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen, with emphasis on taxonomy, biodiversity, zoogeography and parasitology.
He quit his career as an academy-employee to become an independent researcher focussing on biodiversity, zoogeography and aspects of evolution. He is known to the malacological community as author of several books on Cowries, from well over a hundred scientific papers, collabourator of the MNHN, Paris and as active traveller in search of she... Read more
Dr. Marian Litvaitis has been studying turbellarian flatworms for more than 20 years. Her main interests are the systematics and taxonomy of polyclads. She obtained her BS and MS degrees from Clemson University, SC and her PhD from the University of Maine in Orono. She is a Professor of Zoology at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH. In her laboratory, the Flatworm Wranglers study evolutionary relationships of polyclads using light and electron microscopic approaches, as well as molecu... Read more
Dr. Alexander Martynov has studied opisthobranch molluscs since 1985 year, firstly at the coast of the Japan Sea, but then expanded his researches to all vast Russian Seas.
The main fields of interests are Opisthobranch taxonomy and phylogeny. Scientific Researcher, Ph.D. thesis (1999) was titled “Fauna of the nudibranchs molluscs of NW part of the Japan Sea (with discussion on the taxonomy and phylogeny of the order Nudibranchia)”. Principal regions of study are NW Pacific, Arctic, North Atlan... Read more
Polychaetes and marine invertebrates have been Leslie's passion for over 30 years. While in college she started working at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. Soon she found that actually working with critters through hands-on research was far more fascinating than classes and dropped out. After 10 years there she worked at consulting companies learning more all the time and was eventually hired as Collection Manager of Polychaetes at the Allan Hancock Foundation (Universit... Read more
Vinicius Padula is a Brazilian marine biologist who is studying nudibranchs since the beginning
of his undergraduate studies, 2003. Bachelor in Marine Biology and M.Sc. in Zoology by the Rio
de Janeiro Federal University, Brazil, Vinicius has as main interests taxonomy, biogeography
and evolution of nudibranchs. He collaborates also in studies of polyclad flatworms. His
research is more focused in tropical western Atlantic fauna, including Bermuda, the Caribbean
Sea and Brazil, region studi... Read more
Honorary Fellow Australian Institute of Professional Photography;
Associate Australian museum;
Consultant Queensland Museum;
Project AWARE Honorary Board of Governors ASIA/PACIFIC;
2007 inductee to the SCUBA DIVERS HALL OF FAME.
Multi-award winning photographic environmentalist, Neville has been seriously recording the aquatic wildlife of the Asia/Pacific region since 1963.
With over 1000 published articles in over 150 magazines, 100,000 images and 60 marine life natural history b... Read more