Winston Ponder

Dr Winston Ponder

Senior Fellow

Key Info

  • Position Title
    Senior Fellow, Malacology
  • Section
    Malacology Collection
    Branch
    Life and Geosciences
    Division
    Australian Museum Research Institute

Email Dr Winston Ponder

Senior Fellow at the Australian Museum and an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney. Before retirement in 2005, he was a Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum, where he worked in the Malacology section for 37 years and was involved in organising and building up the extensive collection. While at the museum, Dr Ponder also held several honorary positions at a number of Australian universities. In addition to pursuing research programs, he has also been active in transferring expertise to new generations of young zoologists by way of training research students, hosting overseas collaborators, running workshops, organising a number of conferences and running an intensive mollusc course at the University of Wollongong over several years.

His research extends broadly across marine and freshwater molluscs and includes observations of living animals, microanatomy, biometrics, cladistics and molecular analysis. He, along with collaborators, notably David Lindberg at the University of California, Berkeley, has been involved in the revolution in molluscan phylogenetics that has taken place over the last 20 years. His publications include 255 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, two edited books on molluscs and one on invertebrate conservation and, most recently, two major textbooks on molluscs. Recently he produced, with others, an online interactive key and information system of Australian freshwater molluscs, has been involved with the molluscan part of the online Australian faunal directory, and was editor of the journal Molluscan Research for 14 years. He organised or co-organised 12 national or international meetings and presented papers at many more. He has undertaken study trips and field work in various parts of the world over more than 40 years but field studies have mainly focused on Australian marine and freshwater habitats. During the course of his work he has described numerous species, genera and several families of molluscs.

Qualifications

BSc., MSc, PhD, DSc

Appointments

Honorary Associate, Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

Awards

Hamilton Prize, Royal Society of N.Z., 1968.

Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society, NSW, 2000

Australian Marine Sciences Association, Silver Jubilee award 2008

Finalist for Eureka Prize in Taxonomy 2008

Clarke Medal, Royal Society of NSW 2010

Lifetime Achievement Award (Australian Museum), 2017