Nerida Gaye Wilson is an invertebrate marine molecular biologist at the

Western Australian Museum The Western Australian Museum is a statutory authority within the Culture and the Arts Portfolio, established under the ''Museum Act 1969''. The museum has six main sites. The state museum, now known as WA Museum Boola Bardip, officially re-ope ...

who has interests in diversity, systematics, phylogeny, phylogeography and behavior. Wilson has been instrumental in demonstrating the level of marine cryptic species complexes in Antarctic waters, testing the circumpolar distribution paradigm with molecular data, and using interdisciplinary approaches to show how Antarctic diversity may have been generated. Her work with

NOAA The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

on Antarctic Marine Living Resources has been used to regulate exploratory

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

fisheries.

Early life and education

Wilson grew up on the outskirts of Melbourne in Australia, attending Bayswater Primary School and Bayswater Secondary College. She completed a B.Sc. undergraduate degree at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

in the Faculty of Science (1994-1998) followed by a one-year B.Sc. Honours research degree at

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

(1999) in Zoology. She remained at University of Queensland but moved departments to the Centre for Marine Studies for her PhD (awarded 2004).

Career and impact

Wilson began her career using

histology Histology, also known as microscopic anatomy or microanatomy, is the branch of biology which studies the microscopic anatomy of biological tissues. Histology is the microscopic counterpart to gross anatomy, which looks at larger structures vis ...

to recover phylogenetically conserved characters, but then utilized molecular data to help understand the evolutionary history of organisms. Wilson spent almost a year as a Visiting Research Fellow at

University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on N ...

and

South Australian Museum The South Australian Museum is a natural history museum and research institution in Adelaide, South Australia, founded in 1856 and owned by the Government of South Australia. It occupies a complex of buildings on North Terrace in the cultu ...

before taking a postdoctoral position in the USA at

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a public land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama. With more than 24,600 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of more than 30,000 with 1,330 faculty members, Auburn is the second largest uni ...

(Alabama) from 2005-2006. She then moved to Scripps Institution of Oceanography (San Diego California), first as a postdoc (2007-2009), and then as a project Scientist (2009-2010). Wilson returned to Australia in 2010 to take up a Research Scientist position in the Malacology Section at the

Australian Museum The Australian Museum is a heritage-listed museum at 1 William Street, Sydney central business district, New South Wales, Australia. It is the oldest museum in Australia,Design 5, 2016, p.1 and the fifth oldest natural history museum in the ...

(Sydney) and was promoted to Senior Research Scientist in 2012. She then moved to the

in 2014 where she worked in the Aquatic Zoology Department. In 2017 she became the Manager of the Molecular Systematics Unit. She has adjunct status at the

University of Western Australia The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...

and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Wilson has participated in numerous deep sea and Antarctic expeditions, using traditional methods and Remotely Operated Vehicles to obtain samples. She dived in the submersible HOV Alvin in 2005, diving on unexplored vents on the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge (>2500m). In 2010, she led the cruise that recovered large numbers of

Monoplacophora Monoplacophora , meaning "bearing one plate", is a polyphyletic superclass of molluscs with a cap-like shell inhabiting deep sea environments . Extant representatives were not recognized as such until 1952; previously they were known only from ...

for molecular and phylogenomic analysis. To date, she has deployed to Antarctica seven times, acting as Chief Scientist for two of those cruises. Wilson's has been an editor for Invertebrate Systematics journal (2012–present) and the

Journal of Molluscan Studies The ''Journal of Molluscan Studies'' is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the Malacological Society of London, covering research in malacology.

(2012–2020). She was the President of the Society of Australian Systematic Biologists (2015-2017). She co-authored the proposal for the 2012-2020 SCAR Biology Scientific Research Programme "State of the Antarctic Ecosystem (AntECO)" to promote international interdisciplinary research relevant to Antarctic ecosystems. Wilson is committed to a fair, equitable scientific community and has run mentoring workshops (2013, 2015) in conjunction with SASB conferences. She co-founded the Women and Minorities in Science group at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (in 2009), and the Equal Opportunity Science- Australia Facebook group (in 2013). She has also worked with Scripps Educational Alliances, the San Diego Project and the CREATE STEM success initiative using Antarctic data sets to create lesson plans to address the

Next Generation Science Standards The Next Generation Science Standards is a multi-state effort in the United States to create new education standards that are "rich in content and practice, arranged in a coherent manner across disciplines and grades to provide all students an inter ...

Awards and honors

In 2014, Wilson was awarded an Antarctic Service Medal from the

United States Antarctic Program The United States Antarctic Program (or USAP; formerly known as the United States Antarctic Research Program or USARP and the United States Antarctic Service or USAS) is an organization of the United States government which has presence in the A ...

. She was also awarded a Women in Technology WA Tech award for her work in technology, research and advocacy. She led an expedition to the Ningaloo Canyons in 2020, which won the Science Engagement Initiative of the Year at the Premier's Science Awards. She has four species named after her; a hydrothermal vent

polychaete Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class of generally marine annelid worms, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are made ...

''Mesonerilla neridae,'' a

meiofauna Meiobenthos, also called meiofauna, are small benthic invertebrates that live in both marine and fresh water environments. The term ''meiofauna'' loosely defines a group of organisms by their size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrof ...

acochlidian Acochlidiacea, common name acochlidians, are a taxonomic clade of very unusual sea snails and sea and freshwater slugs, aquatic gastropod mollusks within the large clade Heterobranchia. Acochlidia is a variant spelling. Description These a ...

slug ''Pontohedyle neridae'', a myzostomid polychaete ''Endomyzostoma neridae'' and a shelled sacoglossan ''Oxynoe neridae''.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Nerida Australian molecular biologists University of Melbourne alumni Australian Antarctic scientists Australian women scientists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Women Antarctic scientists Women molecular biologists Women marine biologists Australian marine biologists