Rudiger Bieler
My research in my lab focuses on the biology of Mollusca, especially gastropods (snails) and bivalves (clams). I am interested in their species-level diversity, how it evolved over time, and how it is impacted by human activities.
My collections-based approach has been to advance the knowledge of such groups from the most basic scientific infrastructure needs, such as taxon and distributional catalogues, to monographic revisionary work and the training of new generations of specialists, to combined morphological-anatomical-ultrastructural and molecular analyses ultimately allowing our team to use advanced phylogenetic, phylogenomic, and modeling approaches, thus bringing these previously “neglected” taxa and research fields into the mainstream literature. Much of this is approached through series of National Science Foundation (NSF) award projects that build on one another (e.g., PEET, REVSYS, and AToL programs), provide for PhD student and postdoctoral researcher support, and foster the development of associated education and outreach components, including various local and traveling museum exhibitions. Similarly, my engagement in collections development and curation follows long-term trajectories, from large-scale digitization and archival compactorized storage for millions of specimens, to associated laboratory development and to the latest and ongoing efforts (jointly with our Insect collections) to provide online niche-modelling access to the digitized data. Other, strongly field-work-oriented and collections-building, projects deal with regional biodiversity studies, often in the context of detecting invasive or endangered taxa. A special focus is a long-term study of the molluscan diversity of Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary that uses a combination of new collecting and study of existing museum collections to develop present (and recreate past) baseline data of regional diversity in an area heavily impacted by human activity. I extended this project recently by joining forces with Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory in the development, first application, and monitoring of brain & boulder coral restoration
Much of my current focus is on the Bivalve Tree-of-Life(BivAToL) Project. Watch videos filmed during an expedition to Australia.
Another part of my program concentrates on the molluscan diversity of the Florida Keys and how it changed over time:
Our coral restoration efforts, a joint effort with the Field Museum Research Associate Dr. David Vaughan, Director of Mote Marine Lab's Tropical Research Laboratory, were recently featured in the following PBS Newshour video
Education and Work
M.Sc. - Biology, Geography and Biology-Education, University of Hamburg, 1982.
D.Sc. - Zoology, University of Hamburg, 1985.Curator of Invertebrates, FMNH, 2004-present (Associate 1993-2004, Assistant 1990-1993)
Lecturer, Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago, 1992-present
Adjunct Scientist, Mote Marine Laboratory/Florida Keys Tropical Research Lab, 2006-present
- Head, Division of Invertebrates, Field Museum of Natural History, 1990-1997, 1999-2013
- Lecturer, Biological Sciences Collegiate Division, University of Chicago, 1992-1996, 2006-2014.
- Academic Affairs Manager, Field Museum (in Acting Vice President role), 1999-2001
- Chairman, Department of Zoology, Field Museum of Natural History, 1997-2001
- Acting Executive Director, Delaware Museum of Natural History, August-October 1990
- Research Associate, Invertebrate Zoology, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution, DC, 1989-1992
- Research Associate of Malacology, MCZ, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1988-1995
- Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1998-2004
- Assistant Curator of Malacology, Delaware Museum of Natural History, 1988-1990
- Adjunct Assistant Professor, Grad. College of Marine Studies, U Delaware, 1988-1991
- NATO Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Ft. Pierce, FL 1987-1988
- Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellow, NMNH, DC 1985-1986
- Smithsonian Marine Station Postdoctoral Fellow, Ft. Pierce, FL 1986-1987
- Lecturer, Department of Zoology, University of Hamburg, 1982-1985
Accomplishments
See attached publication list
Research Sketch
Research concentrates on the evolution, comparative anatomy, zoogeography and reproductive biology of gastropods (snails) and bivalves (clams and relatives). Emphasis is placed on the currently unresolved "higher-level" phylogenetic relationships between various bivalve orders and subclasses, as well on the internal relationships of the largest marine bivalve family, Veneridae. Data are collected by employing a combination of field and laboratory techniques (ranging from collecting by SCUBA diving to serial-section histology and DNA sequencing), and are derived in part from The Field Museum's extensive holdings of Recent and fossil mollusks. More narrowly defined subprojects deal with several groups of marine snail families, including the lower heterobranchs (e.g., Architectonicidae). Also continuing is monographic work on worm-snails (an enigmatic group that includes important reef builders in the world's oceans), forming the basis for future phylogenetic and zoogeographic studies. Another ongoing project is the first in-depth survey of marine molluscan biodiversity in the Florida Keys.
