Greg Rouse
Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology
Marine Biology Research Division
Curator, Benthic Invertebrate Collection

Greg Rouse has been at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego since 2006. He is also curator of the Benthic Invertebrate Collection at Scripps. He specializes in the study of animal biodiversity.

Greg has been on numerous oceanographic expeditions involving deep sea habitats, including whale falls, hydrothermal vents and methane seeps. He spends alot of time investigating the extraordinary bone-devouring worms known as Osedax. He has also done extensive research on seadragons, including the discovery of the ruby seadragon. The citizen science project SeadragonSearch continues to monitor seadragons in Australia. His deep-sea research interests also include the study of new hydrothermal vent animals from the eastern and western Pacific as well as methane seeps in the eastern Pacific. This led to the discovery of new species of the bizarre ‘purple sock’ worms, Xenoturbella. He also studies the benthic fauna around Antarctica.

Other current research interests include the echinoderm tree of life, particularly crinoids (featherstars and sea lilies), echinoids (sea urchins) and sea cucumbers (holothuroids). The majority of his works focus on diversity and evolution of annelid worms.

He has been involved in the discovery and naming of ~200 species of animals and has published three books and ~300 scientific papers.

Prior to joining Scripps, he held research positions at the South Australian Museum and University of Sydney, and as a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

He obtained his B.S. and M.S. from the University of Queensland and Ph.D. from the University of Sydney.