FAQ
A contribution of The Cephalopod Page
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| Hi, I'm a first year graduate student at University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I'm very much interested in cephalopods. I'd love to do my thesis on cephalopods, but it seems, unfortunately, there is no one whose expertise is cephalopods here. If thing doesn't work out here, I'm thinking of reapply to other universities in North America. Do you have any suggestion or insight for me? I would love to study cephalopods' behavior, but wouldn't mind other aspects of them. |
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| Dr. Jean Boal and I are working to greatly expand this topic and develop a page dedicated to graduate opportunities all over the world. We hope to have this completed by the end of the fall in 2000. In the mean time, students are encouraged to read the section below and also take a look at the research interests of scientists listed in the International Directory of cephalopod workers on my CephBase site. That is a problem. There is a lot that you can get from reading papers - but hands on experience and good guidance can save you a lot of trouble. When you are by yourself it is kind of like reinventing the wheel in many cases. I was all by myself during my undergraduate honors project and boy did I make mistakes.... However, if there is a good ethologist at your school who was willing to adopt you, that could be another option. Another thought is to focus on behavior and pick a relatively easy species to work with - something common, easy to get, and easy to feed. That might allow you to stay where you are. There certainly are plenty of questions left to ask even on common species. I am aware of the following people: Shelley Adamo here at Dalhousie (Psych dept.) is interested in behavior. Shelley would make a great advisor for anyone interested in cephalopod behavior. Clyde Roper and Mike Vecchione at the Smithsonian do mostly systematics but otherwise :-) are great guys to talk to. Although at the Smithsonian, I'm pretty sure these gentlemen hold positions at local universities and can be graduate advisers. Roy Caldwell at O.K. Berkeley has been working with blue-ring octopuses - not sure what he does with em (life cycle stuff?). Roy takes awesome photographs. Jennifer Mather, is a psychologist in Canada, and she does behavioral work. I don't think her university has a graduate program. I've met Ron Toll and Eric Hochberg at the 96 AMU meeting but I'm not sure what they are currently working on. Margaret Macfall-Nagi (spelling?) works with Euprymna at U of Hawaii - she mostly works on their association with bio luminescent bacteria. There has been a lot of great culture work at Galveston Texas - they have the facilities to culture cephalopods and behavior experiments should be possible. I think you can be registered at a Texas University and work there. John Forsythe would be a good person to talk to. These guys have a web page (National Resource Center for Cephalopods) Richard Young at the U of Hawaii - mid water squid, not sure what he is doing now - a nice guy. Bruce Carlson is the Director of the Waikiki Aquarium and he may be able to advise (or help advise students). Bruce has worked with Nautilus. Roger Hanlon was at Galveston but now is at Wood's Hole. He would be another good one. Roger Hanlon and John Messenger recently published a book on Cephalopod Behavior that you should take a look at. Roger Hanlon has done a lot of rearing and behavioral work, he is an avid diver and also takes excellent photographs. My former thesis advisor, Ron O'Dor is also a possibility and at the least someone to talk to for ideas. Ron is primarily a physiologist and has recently done a lot of interesting tracking work. Currently Ron has left Dalhousie University for a two year position in Washington DC as the head of the Census of Marine Life Project. There is a chance that Dale Webber, another good person to talk to, will be keeping the cephalopod lab going strong at Dalhousie. That's about all I can think of at the moment... There are workers in Australia, Japan, and Europe but I don't know as much about them. I can say that a lot of neat stuff is coming out of Australia and Europe. Japan had always had a strong interest in cephalopods. Email addresses for most of the above people should be available on the CephBase web page (directory of ceph workers). Oh geez! I forgot Cigliano - you -have- to talk to him. He does great ceph behaviour work (published in Animal Behaviour, etc.). I forgot about him cause he was a grad student not so long ago. I don't remember where he is at - somewhere in the North East US I think. I get inspired by reading his papers. John's advice was a great help to me when I was an undergraduate. I'm rather a rookie here, so this may not sound as educated or knowledgeable. Hey, you're asking all the right questions. Besides, after u c my spelling you'll probably think I'm the one who isn't educated... :-) I'm only in my 3rd year (at the time I wrote this in 1997) so I'm not exactly and old pro :-) Anyway, I greatly appreciate your response. No prob. Good Luck! Peace Dr. James Wood |