Dr Joseph DiBattista, Ichthyologist Joseph DiBattista is a Research Fellow in the TrEnD Lab at Curtin University. Via a joint appointment, he is also Curator of the Ichthyology Collection at the Australian Museum (AM) and an AMRI researcher, based in Sydney. The AM’s Collection holds about 1.8 million adult and larval specimens and over 10,000 […]

Recently-published research confirms the Great Barrier Reef has been resilient to major changes in climate, sea level and water quality on a 30,000 year timescale. Jody Webster is a marine geoscientist. He participated in our Can We Save the Reef? symposium at the Australian Museum in April 2018. With Yusuke Yokoyama, he led IODP Expedition […]

In his book  Other Minds – the octopus and the evolution of intelligent life  Peter Godfrey-Smith  goes back 600 million years to find the common ancestor of octopuses and humans. It was probably a simple worm-like creature, living at a time when no organisms had made it on to land.   Octopuses,squid and cuttlefish are all cephalopods, […]

2018 is our 40th year of supporting science at the Australian Museum’s Lizard Island Research Station and elsewhere on the Great Barrier Reef. Our achievements belong to everyone involved: the talented and dedicated research scientists; the institutions who employ them and provide their base funding; the staff at the Station and the Museum; our Trustees; and […]

How important is continuing research on the Great Barrier Reef, now that (a) the coral population has been diminished and needs decades without further bleaching or cyclone damage to fully recover; (b) climate science says it is unlikely to have this recovery period unless greenhouse gases are significantly reduced;  and (c) there is no realistic […]

Bleaching events killed many reef-building corals in the late summers of 2016 and 2017 .  Given enough time (i.e. a decade or two without further bleaching), these corals will re-establish. Millions of tiny new corals have already appeared during the cooler months, but the prospects for bleaching-free decades over the remainder of this century are […]

2017 – a year of further bleaching and hope for recovery   January 2017:  Greg Torda’s proposed research on ability of corals to adapt or acclimatise to higher sea temperatures was outlined in Coral recovery – basis for hope. Daniela Ceccareli and Zoe Richards were counting survivors. February:  Archaeological studies at Lizard Island provide a baseline […]

Professor Morgan Pratchett is a leading researcher on the Crown of Thorns Starfish (COTS).  In our 2014 LIRRF donor update he outlined knowledge gaps relating to COTS.  That year we received a $500,000 Commemorative Grant from The Ian Potter Foundation for research to improve ability to control coral-killing outbreaks.  The goal was to make a […]

Publication is vital in science. It invokes the quality assurance of peer review and shares the research with everyone. Projects at Lizard Island are rarely ready for publication when the scientists leave the island.  There is always more work to be done back in their home institutions, analysing samples and data, incorporating other research, consulting […]

A device inspired by Lizard Island research identifies susceptibility to age-related macular degeneration. It prompts actions to reduce the chance of blindness later in life. Dr Shelby Temple was awarded a 2012 Yulgilbar Fellowship to study polarised vision. His work at at the Lizard Island Research Station required apparatus that displayed pattens of polarised light. […]