Daphne Gail Fautin

Daphne Gail Fautin (25 May 1946 – 12 March 2021) was an American professor of invertebrate zoology at the University of Kansas, specializing in sea anemones and symbiosis.

[2][3][4] Fautin has published numerous scientific articles and texts—including co-authoring Encyclopædia Britannica's entry on cnidarians—and her publications have been widely cited by other researchers in the field.

Among her current positions, she is the curator of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and serves as vice president and commissioner of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, overseeing the naming of new species.

[5] Fautin has been called "the world authority on [sea] anemones",[1] by Prof. J. Frederick Grassle of Rutgers University, who led the international Census of Marine Life which was completed in 2010.

Her Ph.D. dissertation was "Natural History of the Sea Anemone Epiactis prolifera Verrill, 1869, with Special Reference to Its Reproductive Biology".