Dr. Dimitry Schepetov (Danid Katzanelson)

Dr. Dimitry Schepetov is a curator of marine mollusks and a senior researcher at the Steinhardt Museum since October 2025. His main interest is Sea Slug evolution, phylogeny, and taxonomy. Sea Slugs (Heterobranchia) are a group of exceptionally beautiful marine animals with a most interesting evolutionary history. Their different lineages adapted to a wide variety of diets, and many co-opt chloroplasts, cnidocysts or toxic chemical compounds from their pray. Speciation in many groups occurred hand in hand with a shift in their food preferences, making their adaptation a most interesting evolutionary model. Dimitry uses an integrative approach, combining classic morphological investigation with genetic and genomic data to study such events and revise taxonomy to match phylogeny. In many cases seeking the most taxonomically problematic groups is a gateway to finding the most interesting evolutionary cases.