Queensland Natural History Award 2018 – Dr John Stanisic

The Queensland Natural History Award for 2018 was presented to Dr John Stanisic by Mr Neil Fordyce.

Dr John StanisicDr Stanisic is Australia’s foremost expert on land snails and held the position of Curator of Molluscs at the Queensland museum for 26 years. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at Queensland Museum.

Since retiring from the museum Dr Stanisic has worked as a Biodiversity Scientist and in 2010 was awarded “Certified Environmental Practitioner of the Year” by the Environmental Institute of Australia and New Zealand.

He has described over 400 new species and more than 100 genera of land snails and has surveyed more than 2000 terrestrial sites for land snails in eastern Australia. This work has resulted in the publication of the important two volumes of “Australian Land Snails” describing 1500 snails. He has authored, or contributed to, 49 peer reviewed papers, literally hundreds of unpublished scientific reports and many popular articles.

As well as his professional career Dr Stanisic has volunteered his time to contribute to raising awareness of science with school children. One notable example of this is the Samford State School Biodiversity Project 2011.

Dr Stanisic received his BSc(hons) from the University of Sydney in 1972 and subsequently his MSc in 1978 both works being on the study of freshwater sponges. In 1988 he was awarded a PhD in Zoology from the University of Queensland for his thesis on “Systematics and biogeography of east Australian Charopidae “(phylum Mollusca).