Lisa-ann Gershwin

Lisa-ann Gershwin, also known as Lisa Gershwin, is a biologist based in Launceston, Tasmania, who has described over 200 species of jellyfish,[1] and written and co-authored several non-fiction books about Cnidaria (jellyfish and allies) including Stung! (2013)[2] and Jellyfish – A Natural History (2016).[3] She provides independent advice related to jellyfish worldwide to the media, online and via The Jellyfish App.[4] She was a candidate in the 2021 Tasmanian state election running as an independent in the electorate of Clark.[5]

Lisa-ann Gershwin
Born
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipAustralian
Alma materCalifornia State University, Northridge (BSc, 1997)
University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 2003)
Scientific career
FieldsCnidariology
InstitutionsCSIRO

Education

Born in Los Angeles, California, Gershwin began studying jellyfish in 1992.

In 1993 she received an Associate of Arts degree in Biology from Los Angeles Pierce College.[6]

In 1997 Gershwin was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology from California State University Northridge.[6]

She was a Fulbright Fellow in 1998–1999.

Gershwin earned a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from the University of California Berkeley in 2003 and completed a second Ph.D. in Marine Biology at James Cook University in 2005.[7][6]

Career

Gershwin has worked with and for a range of scientific organisations, including CSIRO.[7]

She developed a system to predict blooms of the hazardous Irukandji jellyfish in north Queensland. She led a team that discovered that the blooms coincide with the blooming of salps, and that these were prompted by upwelling after the dying down of trade winds.[8] In December 2017 Gershwin's team refined a model for the early warning forecasting systems for irukandjis, with water testing off Cairns' northern beaches.[9][10]

She has described several poisonous jellyfish—nine species of irukandji,[11] including the Queensland species Malo kingi and Malo maxima,[12] and the giant irukandji species Keesingia gigas from Western Australia, which was discovered without tentacles.[13]

Image of Bazinga rieki, described and photographed by Geshwin
Bazinga rieki, described and photographed by Geshwin

Gershwin was one of the co-describers of the unusual jellyfish Bazinga rieki, which is the sole member of the new family Bazingidae and partly named for the colloquialism uttered by Dr. Sheldon Cooper in the TV program The Big Bang Theory.[14] In early 2014, a giant "snotty" jellyfish some 1.5m in diameter was discovered at a beach in Howden, south of Hobart. Studied by Gershwin currently, it is due to be described in a future paper.[15]

Publications

Books

Gershwin's 2013 book entitled Stung describes the diversity and adaptability of jellyfish, and their increasing numbers at the expense of other organisms worldwide, through over-fishing, pollution and modification of the marine environment.[2] She concedes there is little that can be done to reverse or even halt the process of the marine environment becoming dominated by jellyfish worldwide.[16]

In 2016, Gershwin's 224 page book Jellyfish – a natural history was published by The Ivy Press. It covers jellyfish anatomy, life history, taxonomy and ecology and includes species level information and many full page photographs.[17]

Articles

Gershwin wrote for The Conversation in December 2015 about blue bottles,[18] and in January 2016, about deadly sea creatures.[19]

In November 2017, Gershwin completed an invited book review for Nature, spanning Juli Berwald's Spineless: the science of jellyfish and the art of growing a backbone, and Danna Staaf's Squid empire: the rise and fall of the cephalopods.[20]

Profiles

In February 2014, Gershwin was interviewed by Bec Crew for Scientific American.[21]

In June 2014, Gershwin was highlighted as a valuable expert in Anne Mather's article on funding cuts for CSIRO's Hobart office.[1] In January 2019, ABC reported that Gershwin's role at CSIRO would finish in February as her contract was not being renewed, but that she would continue her jellyfish research through her private consultancy.[22]

In May 2017, Gershwin was interviewed by Richard Fidler for ABC Radio.[23]

News interviews

In February 2017, Gershwin commented on a jellyfish bloom at Deception Bay, as being the biggest she had seen in her 25 years of research.[24] In January 2018, she was interviewed about an unusual wave of bluebottles in Cairns.[25] In January 2018, the Atlantic cited her 2007 Radio National interview on the symptoms of being stung by irukandji, Malo kingi.[26]

Personal life

Gershwin is related to composer George Gershwin.[11] She was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome in 2010.[27]

Further reading

References
  1. Mather, Annie (29 June 2014). "Expert in deadly jellyfish loses job as funds dry up". Hobart Mercury. News Ltd. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  2. "Stung!". Goodreads. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  3. "Jellyfish". Goodreads. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  4. "The Jellyfish App". thejellyfishapp.com. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  5. "Home - lisagershwin.com". lisagershwin.com. Retrieved 1 May 2021.
  6. "CV: Lisa-Ann Gershwin", stingeradvisor.com. Accessed June 30, 2020.
  7. "Dr Lisa Gershwin". people.csiro.au. Archived from the original on 25 April 2018. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  8. Kachel, Nicholas (14 May 2014). "Improving prediction of deadly Irukandji jellyfish blooms". News@CSIRO. CSIRO. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  9. "Science's sting in tail". Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  10. "Subscribe to the Cairns Post". www.cairnspost.com.au. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  11. Williams, Robyn (17 July 2004). "Gershwin & the Irukandji". The Science Show. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Retrieved 24 January 2015.
  12. Gershwin, L. (2007). Malo kingi: A new species of Irukandji jellyfish (Cnidaria: Cubozoa: Carybdeida), possibly lethal to humans, from Queensland, Australia. Zootaxa 1659 55–68.
  13. "New toxic jellyfish with no tentacles found in WA". Australian Geographic. 8 August 2014. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
  14. Gershwin, L. & Davie, P.J.F. (30 June 2013). "A remarkable new jellyfish (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa) from coastal Australia, representing a new suborder within the Rhizostomeae. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum — Nature 56(2)" (PDF). Proceedings of the ... International Congress of Arachnology. Queensland Museum: 625–630. ISSN 0079-8835.
  15. Levy, Megan (6 February 2014). "New species of giant 'snotty' jellyfish found in Tasmania". Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media.
  16. Flannery, Tim (26 September 2013). "They're Taking Over!". The New York Review of Books. NYREV. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  17. "National Library of Australia Bookshop". bookshop.nla.gov.au. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  18. Gershwin, Lisa-ann. "The blue bottles are coming, but what exactly are these creatures?". The Conversation. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  19. Gershwin, Lisa-ann. "Don't go in the water: a world of pain awaits in Australia's deep blue seas". The Conversation. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  20. Gershwin, Lisa-ann (2 November 2017). "Zoology: The joys of spinelessness". Nature. 551 (32): 32. Bibcode:2017Natur.551...32G. doi:10.1038/551032a.
  21. Crew, Bec. "In Conversation with Lisa-Anne Gershwin, Jellyfish Savant". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  22. Sundstrom, Kathy (10 January 2019). "Irukandji warning system in doubt as leading stinger expert departs CSIRO". ABC news. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  23. The delicate and deadly world of jellyfish: from Bazinga to Shiraz, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 26 April 2017, retrieved 4 January 2018
  24. "Thousands of jellyfish wash up on Queensland beach". ABC News. 2 February 2017. Retrieved 4 January 2018.
  25. Bateman, Daniel (4 January 2018). "Northern Beaches awash with bluebottles". The Cairns Post. Retrieved 4 January 2018.
  26. Giggs, Rebecca. "Imagining the Jellyfish Apocalypse". The Atlantic. Retrieved 4 January 2018.
  27. http://lisagershwin.com/
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