Dr. Shimek is an invertebrate zoologist with over 35 years of experience in teaching about and working with marine and freshwater invertebrates. He has taught invertebrate zoology with an emphasis on understanding the organism's role in its environment and how that role is related to the functional morphology of the organism. His research specialty is predator-prey interactions in unconsolidated sediments, particularly the interactions involving turrid gastropods, and scaphopod mollusks. Additionally, he has been a private consultant to federal, state, local governments and private businesses on the effects of toxic pollutants, mostly heavy metals, on marine organisms and ecological communities. He has published numerous scientific articles, and been an invited speaker at eleven international or national scientific or professional symposia dealing with various of the above topics..

He has been Chairman of the Biology Department of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and Assistant Director of the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. He has also taught at the University of Washington, the Oregon State University, and the Montana State University.

Awarded the 2001 MASNA Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Marine Aquarium Hobby at MACNA 13, he has published over 90 articles which have appeared throughout the aquarium magazines published in the United States. He has been an invited speaker at national, regional, and society meetings, where he has discussed and promoted reef-keeping based on knowledge of natural systems, and rationality.

ABSTRACT

Dr. Shimek will be conducting 2 different sessions at IMAC:

Coral Reef Diversity in the Home Aquarium

Will it be a glass box full of stony corals, or a portion of a coral reef? Maintaining the former is simple and easy, maintaining the latter is more difficult. The choice is up to the aquarist. I will discuss the relationships between the various components of a reef ecosystem that are necessary to go beyond a glass box of colored sticks and allow the development of a true analogue of a coral reef. Although some of the methodology is familiar to reef aquarists, many of the constraints on their systems are not obvious, and may change both within a single system or when the system is altered. I will discuss the necessity for both competition and predation in the aquarium ecosystem as well as limitations imposed on diversity and biomass by the system.

and

Identification of Unknown Things...

Participants should bring in a CD with one or, preferably, more images of unknown or problematical organisms; excluding corals and fishes. The images will be examined and identifications will be attempted, and the organisms will be discussed as necessary. Crisp, in-focus, macro images are best; but sometimes we have to go with what we can get. Generally, the larger the image (up to about 10Mbytes), the better the chance of identification. If necessary, I may do some manipulations of the images to make characteristics more apparent.