Darryl Potter

Darryl Potter is the Collection Manager (Molluscs) at Queensland Museum and assists the Collection Manager of the Crustacean section.

Darryl has worked at Queensland Museum since 1981 and during this time has participated in both terrestrial and marine field surveys throughout Queensland and New South Wales, including islands of the Great Barrier Reef. These trips involved extensive collecting of land snails in rainforests and vine thickets and crustacean and marine mollusc collecting while scuba diving on coral and rocky reefs. The identification, registration and databasing of these collected specimens over 30 years has helped Darryl to acquire an extensive knowledge particularly of land snails and marine gastropods. He has co-authored papers for the description of 16 new species of Australian land snails.

Darryl has an interest in the conservation of biodiversity and completed a Masters Degree in Environmental Science at Griffith University in 2002. He examined conservation efforts for native mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, with his thesis focused on captive breeding programs in Australian zoos and the reintroduction of threatened species to the wild.

Throughout his career, Darryl has authored many popular articles, contributed to scientific texts and field guides including:

• Co-author of ‘Shells of Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef’
• One of four authors of ‘Australian Land Snails, Vol. 1: a field guide to eastern Australian species’ (2010)
• One of four authors of ‘Australian Land Snails, Vol. 2: a field guide to southern, central and western species’ (2018)
• One of three authors of ‘A guide to land snails of Australia’ (2022).

Projects

• Databasing and value-adding to the Queensland Museum registered molluscan specimens
• Reorganising and updating the new museum spirit collection for Molluscs (Hendra)
• Reorganising and updating the existing dry collection for Molluscs at South Bank
• Promoting the expertise of the Queensland Museum molluscan biodiversity collection staff – talks, interviews, exhibits, etc.