Nerida G. Wilson

Nerida Wilson
Nerida Wilson holding a ruby seadragon
Nationality	Australia
Fields	Invertebrate marine biology
Institutions	Western Australian Museum
Alma mater	BSc University of Melbourne PhD University of Queensland
Notable awards	Antarctic Service Medal
Website Wilson at the Western Australian Museum

Nerida Gaye Wilson is an invertebrate marine molecular biologist at the Western Australian Museum who has interests in diversity, systematics, phylogeny, phylogeography and behavior. Wilson has been instrumental in demonstrating the level of marine cryptic species complexes in Antarctic waters, testing the circumpolar distribution paradigm with molecular data, and using interdisciplinary approaches to show how Antarctic diversity may have been generated. Her work with NOAA on Antarctic Marine Living Resources has been used to regulate exploratory benthic fisheries.

Wilson grew up on the outskirts of Melbourne in Australia, attending Bayswater Primary School and Bayswater Secondary College. She completed a B.Sc. undergraduate degree at the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Science (1994-1998) followed by a one-year B.Sc. Honours research degree at University of Queensland (1999) in Zoology. She remained at University of Queensland but moved departments to the Centre for Marine Studies for her PhD (awarded 2004).

Wilson began her career using histology to recover phylogenetically conserved characters, but then utilized molecular data to help understand the evolutionary history of organisms. Wilson spent almost a year as a Visiting Research Fellow at University of Adelaide and South Australian Museum before taking a postdoctoral position in the USA at Auburn University (Alabama) from 2005-2006. She then moved to Scripps Institution of Oceanography (San Diego California), first as a postdoc (2007-2009), and then as a project Scientist (2009-2010). Wilson returned to Australia in 2010 to take up a Research Scientist position in the Malacology Section at the Australian Museum (Sydney) and was promoted to Senior Research Scientist in 2012. She then moved to the Western Australian Museum in 2014 where she works across the Aquatic Zoology Department's Molecular Systematics Unit, and is an adjunct at University of Western Australia.