Education:

Ph.D., Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 1998
B.S. (Magna Cum Laude) Industrial Microbiology, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, PR, 1990

 Courses Taught:

• BIOL 205, Ecology and Adaptation
• BIOL 521, Bioecology
• BIOL 800, Supervised Doctoral Research
• BIOL 996, Dissertation Research
• BIOL 997, Dissertation Guidance

Research Interests:

The Cruz-Rivera lab welcomes interested undergraduate and graduate students to join investigations in the following general areas of inquiry -

• Marine and freshwater ecology
• Consumer-prey interactions
• Invertebrate biology
• Chemical ecology
• Animal nutrition
• Invasive species
• Algal and zooplankton blooms
• Symbiosis
• Marine Biotechnology

Bio

Dr. Cruz-Rivera started at Morgan State in 2022 and has held faculty positions in the USA, Egypt, Bangladesh, and the US Virgin Islands. His research interests lie in the ecology and evolution of aquatic consumer-prey interactions, from the organismal to the ecosystem level, with an emphasis on the nutritional and chemical properties of prey and how these affect animal consumption and fitness. This work combines natural history observations and diversity surveys with manipulative experiments assessing animal feeding behavior and fitness, and measurements of food nutritional traits, secondary chemicals, and structural properties. More recently, the inclusion of remote sensing and molecular techniques has become part of this research. Within the overall interest in aquatic environments, the Cruz-Rivera lab studies mechanisms affecting marine plant-herbivore interactions, the links between aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem health, the effects of introduced species on natural communities, the development of harmful blooms (including algae and gelatinous zooplankton), the nature of aquatic symbioses including parasitism, and how ongoing climate change may alter aquatic communities. Some of the unexpected outcomes of this research have included the discovery and taxonomic description of various invertebrate species new to science. Insights gained from this work are also applied to aquaculture and marine biotechnology investigations. Using a comparative approach, this work has been conducted in broadly different environments, including the temperate North Atlantic and North Pacific coasts, the Chesapeake Bay, the Mediterranean Sea, both sides of the tropical Pacific, South Australia, the Red Sea, the Caribbean, brackish lakes in Egypt, temporary freshwater bodies in the Virgin Islands, and the South African intertidal. Dr. Cruz-Rivera serves in the editorial boards of Frontiers in Marine Science, Diversity, and Journal of Crustacean Biology, has reviewed proposals and fellowship applications for NASA, NOAA, NSF, USGS, and National Geographic, and is a member of the Caribbean Fishery Management Council's Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management Technical Advisory Panel (EBFMTAP). In 2021 he was selected for a 17-person panel to evaluate progress, and propose the future direction, of the National Science Foundation’s EPSCoR Program. He also serves on the board of the Environmental Justice Journalism Initiative (EJJI), a non-profit aiming to enhance environmental education and community involvement in Maryland.

Recent Publications (since 2020):

Cassell, J.S., E. Cruz-Rivera, S. Wyllie-Echeverria, and P. Jobsis. 2024. Variation in nutritional quality of an invasive seagrass does not explain its low palatability to two key herbivores in a Caribbean Bay. Aquatic Botany 190:103711. DOI: 10.1016/j.aquabot.2023.103711

Cruz-Rivera, E. and T. Hafez. 2023. Sex and reproductive behavior modify herbivory in an aquatic consumer. Aquatic Sciences 85:12 DOI: 10.1007/s00027-022-00911-1

Chiquillo, K.L., P.H. Barber, M.A. Vázquez, E. Cruz-Rivera, D.A. Willette, G. Winters, and P. Fong. 2023. An invasive seagrass drives its own success in two invaded seas by both negatively affecting native seagrasses and benefiting from those costs. Oikos 2023 (3), e09403. DOI: 10.1111/oik.09403

Kumari, G., A.D. Phillott, and E. Cruz-Rivera. 2022. Sediment processing by two estuarine crabs: small efficient consumers alongside big inefficient ones. Journal of Crustacean Biology 42(3):1-6. DOI: 10.1093/jcbiol/ruac051

Cruz-Rivera, E., M.-E.-D. Sherif, S. El-Sahhar and T. Lombardi. 2022. Spatial variability in a symbiont-diverse marine host and assessing ecological interactions from observational data. Diversity. 14(3):197. DOI: 10.3390/d14030197

Cruz-Rivera, E. and D. C. Rogers. 2022. An unavoidably short history of inland aquatic animal diversity research in the US Virgin Islands. Aquatic Ecology 56:719–740. DOI: 10.1007/s10452-021-09933-7

Rogers, D. C. and E. Cruz-Rivera. 2021. A preliminary survey of the inland aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Journal of Natural History 55(13-14):799-850. DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2021.1923850

Halliday-Isaac, A.K., J.B. Robinson, E. Cruz-Rivera, A.G. Campbell, and P.C. Sikkel. 2021. Environmental correlates of prevalence of an intraerythrocytic apicomplexan infecting Caribbean damselfish. Parasitologia 1(2):69-82. DOI: 10.3390/parasitologia1020009

Rogers, D.C. and E. Cruz-Rivera. 2020. A new Eulimnadia (Branchiopoda: Spinicaudata: Limnadiidae) from the US Virgin Islands. Zoological Studies 59:e42 DOI: 10.6620/ZS.2020.59-42

Links to Current and Past Research:

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WQK1_78AAAAJ&hl=en 
ResearchGate Profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edwin-Cruz-Rivera
Invasive Seagrass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0F8hyl2eZE
Seagrass and Climate Change: https://www.viepscor.org/news/2018/10/edwin-cruz-rivera
Seaweed Accumulations in the Caribbean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEr4v7_Mkdw&t=1525s
Seaweed Accumulations (Good Morning America): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzCCPtyTBEg
The Environmental Justice Journalism Initiative: https://www.ejji.org/
New Species Discovered in St. Thomas: https://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/news/scientists-discover-species-of-ancient-shrimp-at-uvi-campus/article_b5e94d63-095e-5a7a-be00-bc3ff04f50ab.html