Dr. Shevy Rothman is the curator of the fish and aquatic parasites collections and a research associate at the Steinhardt Museum. Shevy completed her MSc studies at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Dr. Menachem Goren, studying the ecology of freshwater fishes in Israel. Later, she was a research assistant and studied parasites of a non-indigenous fish in the Mediterranean Sea and has since focused her scientific interest in marine fishes and their parasites. She completed her PhD in Tel Aviv University under the joint supervision of Dr. Menachem Goren and Prof. Ariel Diamant from the National center of Mariculture. Her thesis dealt with: “Fish gill parasites (Platyhelminthes: Monogenea) in the pelagic zone of the Levant Basin: Taxonomy, evolution and ecology”. Soon after she completed her PhD in May 2018, she has started her three-year postdoctoral research on fish parasites co-introductions in the Mediterranean Sea with Prof. Jonathan Belmaker. Her main research interests include the diversity, taxonomy and ecology of fishes and fish parasites. She focuses on non-indigenous species, host-parasite interactions and its implication on marine bioinvasions, and on cryptic fish species.

In addition to her work, Shevy has been sharing her knowledge of Mediterranean fishes with the public, and her connection to local fishers and divers has evolved into a citizen’s science initiative, aimed at monitoring and collecting non-indigenous fish species. She is currently the chair of “Sharks in Israel”, an environmental organization that utilizes citizens science methods to study shark and rays and promotes their conservation.