Mitigating the devastating effects of coral eating Crown of Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster cf. solaris, aka CoTS) has been the focus of 21 LIRS based projects over the past 5 years. This extensive and collective research has been funded by the generous $500,000 grants program donated by The Ian Potter Foundation 50th Anniversary Commemorative Grant in […]
Archives for September 2020
Welcome Kris Helgen
The Lizard Island Research Station is part of the Australian Museum Research Institute. Professor Kris Helgen has been appointed Chief Scientist and Director of AMRI. Prior to this appointment he was Curator in Charge of Mammals at the Smithsonian. He has great knowledge of biodiversity and remains optimistic for the future of our natural world. […]
Recovery of Coral Growth Rates after Severe Bleaching
Recovery of coral growth rates and reef carbonate budget after severe bleaching events at Lizard Island Corals are the building blocks of remarkably diverse ecosystems, housing thousands of reef fish and associated organisms, but are extremely sensitive to anthropogenic stressors, such as ocean warming. The corals at Lizard Island experienced heat stress in unprecedented back-to-back […]
Using Larval Barcoding to Estimate Stomatopod Species Richness for Conservation Monitoring
We’ve previously written about research conducted in the waters around Lizard Island on Mantis Shrimps, a group of marine crustaceans called stomatopods. In fact over the past 3 decades there has been extensive sampling of stomatopods in the Lizard region providing a good baseline of species richness. The Lizard Island Field Guide currently documents 28 […]
Nooks, crannies and critters
Drawing on field work conducted at the Lizard Island Research Station, a large team of ecologists and engineers has developed a relatively simple way to standardize how habitat complexity is measured. The research, recently published in Nature, Ecology and Evolution, begins with a simple insight: places with lots of nooks and crannies contain lots of […]
Going to the LIMIT on Lizard Island: the impact of ecological disturbance on coral reef metabolism
By Tyler Cyronak Lizard Island is one of the few sites in the world where a long-term historical study of coral reef metabolism can be conducted. Historical measurements of reef photosynthesis and calcification date back to 1975 when the Lizard Island Metabolic Exchange on Reefs (LIMER) expedition first measured reef metabolism by following dye patches […]