Florida State University is pleased to present Dr. Lee A. Fuiman as the Mote Eminent Scholar in Fisheries Ecology at Mote Marine Laboratory for 2018-2019. Dr. Fuiman is the Director of the Fisheries and Mariculture Laboratory at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute. He is also Professor in the Department of Marine Science at The University of Texas at Austin and holder of the Perry R. Bass Chair in Fisheries and Mariculture. He received his bachelor’s degree from Southampton College, his master’s from Cornell University, and his Ph,D. degree from the University of Michigan. He was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Biology, which supported two years of research at the Scottish Marine Biological Association laboratory in Oban, Scotland. He has worked at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute since 1988, and served as its Director for seven years.

Dr. Fuiman is an authority on the biology and ecology of larval fishes, with a special interest in how developmental processes affect mortality of larvae and how external factors, such as the physical/chemical environment and maternal contribution of nutrition, affect fish larvae and recruitment. These interests are at the interface between aquaculture and stock-enhancement. He has also conducted research on marine mammals, deep-sea clams, shorebirds, octopus, and marine food-web dynamics. He has 145 scientific publications to his credit, including the first textbook on the importance of larval fishes to fisheries science.

Dr. Fuiman has served as an editor of Advances in Marine Biology and on the editorial board for the Royal Society journal Biology Letters and other prominent journals. He is the originator and Executive Producer of the national radio program/podcast Science and the Sea. He has received several awards, including the Antarctica Service Medal of the United States of America from the National Science Foundation, the Conservation and Environmental Stewardship Award from the Coastal Bend Bays Foundation, and the Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Texas College of Natural Sciences.

As the FSU Mote Scholar in Fisheries Ecology, Dr. Fuiman is leading research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, on the influence of marine finfish nutrition on egg and larval quality.

Florida State University is pleased to present Dr. Mark E. Hay as the Mote Eminent Scholar in Marine Biology for 2018-2019. Dr. Hay is the Teasley Professor of Environmental Biology, a Regents’ Professor, and founder and co-director of the Center for Aquatic Chemical Ecology at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Hay is a marine ecologist known for his work on community ecology and for helping to found the field of marine chemical ecology. His fundamental research has provided key insights on critical aspects of the conservation and restoration of coral reefs and challenged how scientists view ecological and evolutionary processes affecting the establishment and impact of invasive species. He has participated in dozens of ship-based expeditions but more commonly works at remote field stations to conduct longer-term experiments, most recently in Fiji and French Polynesia, and has also worked extensively in the Caribbean and Florida Keys. He has conducted more than 5,000 scuba dives, and has lead four saturation diving missions. Dr. Hay is identified by ISI’s Web-of-Sciences as one of the world’s most cited researchers in the broad area of Ecology and the Environment.

As the FSU Mote Scholar in Marine Biology, Dr. Hay led a Research Working Group on Ecological Functions and Ecosystem Services in Novel Caribbean Coral Reef Systems in May 2018.

Florida State University is pleased to present Dr. Richard K. Grosberg as the Mote Scholar in Marine Biology for 2017-2018. Dr. Grosberg’s research centers on building an understanding of the processes that govern the maintenance of genetic variation, the factors that influence the spatial and temporal distribution of genetic variation in natural populations, and mechanisms that limit conflict and promote the evolution of cooperation. He primarily study marine invertebrates, including anemones, hydroids, sea squirts, and snails; but also likes ants, fungi, and flowering plants. His field sites include the mudflats of the Gulf of California, the rocky shores of California, Oregon, and Washington, laboratory aquaria at Bodega Marine Lab, and the Great Barrier Reef. His research involves field and lab experiments, molecular genetics, population genetics, and phylogenetics.

At the University of California Davis, he is the Director of the Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute, which has the aim of addressing the challenges in stewardship of a changing coastal ocean (http://cmsi.ucdavis.edu/index.html).

As the FSU Mote Scholar in Marine Biology, Dr. Grosberg led a Research Working Group on Mating Systems in the Sea in July 2017.

Professor Peter J. Edmunds
California State University Northridge
Department of Biology

Florida State University is pleased to present Dr. Peter J. Edmunds, the first Mote Eminent Scholar in Marine Biology. Dr. Edmunds’s research on the physiological ecology and long-term dynamics of tropical reef corals elucidates temporal trends and provides a rich ecological context within which mechanistic research can be designed. He studies the organismal biology of individual corals in order to better understand their basic functionality and uses this knowledge to establish mechanistic links between organism performance and population and community dynamics. His research approach combines long-term studies on coral communities with detailed experiments to understand the mechanisms and drivers of coral community change.

From the relatively protected southern coast of St. John, US Virgin Islands, where he has maintained a long-term research program, to the dynamic exposed region of the French Polynesian Mo’orea Coral Reef in the South Pacific, Edmunds explores reefs at scales ranging from the individual to the ecosystem to understand the complex nature of their responses to climate change and ocean acidification. He is a Principal Investigator on a large collaborative project to address the long-term dynamics of coral communities in Moorea as part of the US Long Term Ecological Research program (http://mcr.lternet.edu/ ). Together, these two research programs provide unique opportunities to obtain the temporal detail necessary to understand changes to coral communities and develop management solutions.

Dr. Edmunds has written over 140 peer-reviewed publications and advised over 30 graduate students in his 30-year career. As the 1st FSU Mote Scholar in Marine Biology, Edmunds led a Research Working Group on the causes and consequences of metabolic scaling in clonal marine invertebrates.

Peter J. Edmunds – Coral Reefs & Climate change

2013-2014: Dr. Charles H. Peterson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

2010-2011: Dr. Peter Auster, University of Connecticut

2007-2008: Dr. Kai Lorenzen, University of Florida, FL

2006-2007: Dr. Robert Warner, University of California, Santa Barbara

2004-2005: Dr. Larry B. Crowder, Stanford University Woods Institute

2004: Dr. Ana Maria Parma, National Research Council of Argentina

2001-2002: Dr. Carl Walters, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

2000: Dr. Marc Mangel, University of California, Santa Cruz, Dr. Mangel's work can also be found here

1997: Dr. David Conover, University of Oregon (formerly at SUNY, Stony Brook)