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Dr. Joe Pawlik Dr. Pawlik studies the ecology of coral reef invertebrates, particularly sponges. He and his research group are interested in the chemical mechanisms that invertebrates use to defend themselves against predators and competitors. Dr. Pawlik grew up in a small community in NE Minneapolis, Minnesota called St. Anthony Village, where he attended St. Charles Borromeo through the 6th grade and St. Anthony Village HS until he graduated and continued on with college at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He developed a keen interest in marine biology by watching a late-1960s television program called "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau," and by reading books. He had already decided that he wanted to be a marine biologist at the age of 7, began keeping aquaria by age 10, but did not make his first trip to see the ocean until his parents took him to Brownsville, Texas when he was 11. As an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota, he applied for summer courses at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, and got his first experiences performing scientific research on coral reefs. After graduating from college, Dr. Pawlik was admitted into the Ph.D.
program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of
California, San Diego. For his dissertation research, he studied sandcastle
worms. Sandcastle worms form sandy reefs and mounds along the coasts of
California and Florida. They produce tiny offspring that float in the
plankton for many weeks, before transforming into adult worms when they
contact the sandy tubes of other adults. Dr. Pawlik studied the chemical
signal that the larval worms used to locate adult sand tubes. For more
information on this research, check the web site at: After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Pawlik was awarded fellowships for research
at the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington, in
Friday Harbor, Washington, and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He joined the faculty of the Department
of Biological Sciences of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington
in 1991. His research team consists of a Research Assistant, Mr. Greg
McFall, three graduate students, and 2-5 undegraduate students, all of
whom work on projects related to the chemical ecology of marine invertebrates.
For more information on the research team, check the site at: For a photo, copy the jpeg at: |
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