Curator/Professor Emeritus

His research: Roy studies the behavior of stomatopods, marine crustaceans that are distantly related to shrimp. Roy has been studying stomatopods for over 40 years; at this point, he says, "the animals themselves start asking the questions." These days, Roy is focused on how stomatopods use polarized light to communicate with each other.

His path to the UCMP: Roy is an animal behaviorist and marine biologist — it is a bit unusual for a biologist with his background to be involved with a paleontology museum. However, the UCMP has a large collection of marine invertebrate specimens, some of which are fossils and some of which are modern. Roy has collected many marine invertebrate specimens, including cephalopods and stomatopods, while doing field work in Indonesia and French Polynesia. He contributed these specimens to the UCMP's collections and became a faculty curator. Roy's contributions to the museum don't stop there. "I have an interest in evolution outreach and public education," he says. Roy is the principal investigator on the UCMP's Understanding Evolution and Understanding Science websites.

Selected Publications

• Vetter, K.M. and R.L. Caldwell. 2015. Individual recognition in stomatopods. In: Social Recognition in Invertebrates. L. Aquiloni and E. Tricarico, eds. Springer.

• Caldwell, R.L., R. Ross, A. Rodaniche and C.L. Huffard. 2015. Behavior and Body Patterns of the Larger Pacific Striped Octopus. PLOS ONE, DO1L10,1371 1-17.

• Dougherty, L.F., S. Johnsen, R.L. Caldwell, N.J. Marshall. 2014. A dynamic broadband reflector built from microscopic silica spheres in the 'disco' clam Ctenoides ales. J. R. Soc. Interface 11: 20140407. Notes: Metrics: Altmetric has tracked 2,487,155 articles across all journals so far. Compared to these, this article has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all articles ever tracked by Altmetric. More info and metrics: http://www.altmetric.com/details.php?domain=rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org&citation_id=2463744 Read it

• Caldwell, R.L. 2013. Keeping zebra mantis shrimp: Part 2. Coral Magazine, Jan.-Feb., 74-82.

• Thanukos, A., J.G. Scotchmoor, R. Caldwell, and D.R. Lindberg. 2010. Science 101: Building the foundations for real understanding. Science 330:1764-1765.