“I want people to
appreciate the
complexity and
the beauty of
nature.”
—dr. Roy Caldwell
Born and raised on a farm in Iowa, Roy Caldwell never saw the ocean until he was 21, but now he spends weeks at a time doing
day and night dives in exotic locales in tropical and subtropical seas, mucking around in mud up to his knees and elbows, collecting and photographing
mantis shrimp, and bringing the most interesting back to study in his Berkeley, California, lab. It’s all in the name of science, but Caldwell is a scientist
obsessed by a group of marine animals few care to take seriously. One fan
says Caldwell is “a rock star” among amateur mantis shrimp enthusiasts who
turn to him for hard-to-find answers about a group of unusual invertebrates
prized by some aquarists and loathed by others.
IIK
Dr. Roy Caldwell is publicity shy, hating to have his picture taken, but
generous to a fault with his time and knowledge. As Professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, Caldwell has devoted over 40 years of his life to
studying stomatopods, especially their behavioral ecology. His work on mantis shrimp began in Bermuda and branched out to reefs, lagoons, and often
mucky inshore areas in the Caribbean, Central America, French Polynesia,
and Indonesia, yet he still hasn’t unlocked all their secrets. He even did three
stints in Aquarius, an underwater habitat in Florida that gives researchers
the opportunity to observe and interact with their subjects 24 hours a day.
Slowly and methodically, Dr. Caldwell continues to unravel the secrets
of stomatopods, one at a time. Unlike many researchers, he freely shares
information and expertise with divers and marine aquarists (he is known as
Gonodactylus on Reef Central), believing that knowledge leads to appreciation, which turns into concern and conservation for these amazing animals
and their habitats. He devised and maintains Roy’s List of Stomatopods for the
Aquarium, a website profiling all the commercially available mantis shrimp
species, common and rare, along with ID photographs, rearing conditions,
and suitability for aquaria. See: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/aquarius/
CORAL: What is it about stomatopods that has held your interest for so many
years?
Dr. Caldwell: The complexity of their behavior, particularly the sensory systems, is always turning up a new wrinkle somewhere. I started to lose interest several times, but there’s always
something new that pops up that we didn’t expect. I began studying individual recognition
based on chemical cues, and then ran into the complexity of the eye; I’ve been working on it
for 25 years now. The night-active species have a sort of reflective layer in them. For example,
Echinosquilla guerinii, the Urchin Mantis, has a green-gold layer that you can’t miss because it’s
so intense. I find them by going out at dusk and shining a light along a ledge.
