Herbert R. and Evelyn Axelrod Research Curator, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, and Lead Curator of the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life.

Melanie Stiassny. Denis Finnin / AMNH

Melanie Stiassny's research in tropical waters throughout the world spans the fields of systematic ichthyology, conservation biology, and evolutionary morphology. Her work in aquatic ecosystems provides a synthesis of these areas with strategies that integrate systematics into conservation planning. More than half of the world's vertebrates are fishes, and these animals play a central role in aquatic ecosystems, and, as a source of food, are of considerable social and economic importance throughout the world. In one current study, Dr. Stiassny and her colleagues are documenting the conservation status of the fishes of the western central African countries of Cameroon, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo. Similar studies undertaken by Dr. Stiassny and her colleagues in Madagascar over the last ten years have increased the number of freshwater fish species known on the island by more than 60 percent. She is an advisor to various scientific and conservation organizations such as the World Resources Institute and the International Foundation for Science. She is a member of the Science Advisory Board of Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, the National Council of the World Wildlife Fund, the Advisory Committee for the National Geographic Society's Conservation Trust, and the World Commission on Protected Areas of the IUCN, and has served as an assigning editor for the journal Conservation Biology. Dr. Stiassny, who is writing a comprehensive textbook on fish anatomy, is currently Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and at City College, CUNY. Before joining the Museum in 1987, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. She received a Ph.D. in 1980 from the University of London.