About me
Paul is the Zoological Society of London’s Senior Curator of invertebrates and fish and has worked with the Society since 1982. Paul specialises in the development and management of species conservation breeding and reintroduction programmes with particular focus on ectotherms. He is responsible for the development and management of ZSL’s invertebrate and fish care and conservation including a major focus on coral and coral reef fish husbandry, conservation and threat awareness raising initiatives. He’s also closely involved in the current Red List revision for scleractinian coral, with particular focus on species and ecosystem level climate change impact factors.
Paul’s external positions and involvement include IUCN’s Coral Specialist Group; Invertebrate Conservation Committee; Conservation Planning Specialist Group Strategic Committee Mollusc Specialist Group, Orthoptera Specialist Group, Reintroduction Specialist Group and Information Search and Synthesis Work Theme Leader on IUCN’s Climate Change Specialist Group. He is a trustee of the Frozen Ark biobanking initiative and serves on the European Union of Aquarium Curators Coral Working Group. He also coordinates the European and global Partulid snail conservation breeding and reintroduction programme.
Paul’s fieldwork experience includes 30 years of native invertebrate Species Recovery Programmes; endemic mollusc reintroductions and invasive species surveys on Bermuda, Hawaii and French Polynesia; climate change impacts on the Great Barrier Reef; black rhino surveys and capacity building with Kenya Wildlife Service, invertebrate surveys, birch forest health investigations & survey training in Mongolia, Gharial conservation and regional climate change impacts in Nepal. Weta cricket surveys in New Zealand; invertebrate surveys and habitat protection on St Helena and Ascension Island and mollusc surveys, turtle conservation and biobanking capacity building in Viet Nam. He is a PADI certificated open water scuba diver.
Paul’s research focus includes species and ecosystem level climate change impacts on coral reefs (including participation in the Royal Society, International Programme on State of the Ocean and ZSL Coral Crisis working group, position statement and supporting publication (Veron et al 2009)); improving species-level identification of corals; mosquito and biting-midge spatio-temporal distribution change; automated approaches for decoding honeybee waggle dances and IUCN Climate Change Specialist Group reference tool development. He has also worked with colleagues Matthew Robertson and Pete Carr on Chagos archipelago terrestrial invertebrate survey data and the development of a dedicated Chagos invertebrate database. He’s collaborated on over 40 publications, including Nature and Science.
