Sep 7, 2020 | Ecology, Grants, Long-term, Research
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,... 
May 9, 2020 | COTS, Grants, Research
Newly settled crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster cf. solaris, aka CoTS) have rarely been studied in the field. This knowledge gap in our understanding of CoTS population and outbreak dynamics has been my research focus for the past several years. My interest... 
May 4, 2020 | COTS, Grants, Research
Early detection of population outbreaks in Crown of Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster solaris cf, aka CoTS) is a necessary precursor to containment. Excellent progress has been made over the past few years, especially in the deployment of DNA technology. The five research... 
Feb 11, 2020 | Ecology, Global change, Grants, Reef condition, Research
Assoc. Prof Maria Dornelas (University of St Andrews, Scotland), Assoc. Prof Joshua Madin (University of Hawaii) and fellow collaborators have been making annual visits to LIRS since the early 2000s during which they monitored the changing ecology of coral reef... 
Mar 4, 2019 | Grants, Plastic pollution, Research
My colleagues and I are researching how plastic consumption may affect the transition (recruitment) that fish make from an open water (pelagic) existence to settlement in a coral reef community. Microplastics have been found in the digestive tracts of juvenile coral... 
Feb 15, 2019 | COTS, Grants, Research
The Crown of Thorns Starfish (CoTS) invoke horror and wonder. They also spur important science. Horror and wonder CoTS (Acanthaster) are indigenous to the Great Barrier Reef. They eat coral. In “normal” periods there are relatively few adult CoTS to be found and...