Jun 20, 2019 | Cleaning, Ecology, Research
Zegni Triki spent three months in 2018 collecting data at Lizard Island Research Station for her PhD. Her work was supported by a 2018 Lizard Island Doctoral Fellowship. One part of Zegni’s research examined changes in the brain complexity of cleanerfish,... 
May 27, 2019 | Ecology, Research
If you have spent any time exploring healthy coral reefs, you will have seen clouds of small fish hovering above and then darting into branching corals as you swim past. The fish clearly benefit from the protection offered by the coral branches, retreating to cover... 
Apr 19, 2019 | Ecology, Global change, Research
This is a story of a unique data set quantifying the relationship between the loss of adult corals and new coral recruitment. It is reported in Terry P Hughes et al Global warming impairs stock-recruitment dynamics of corals. Recruitment occurs when tiny coral larvae... 
Mar 31, 2019 | Cleaning, Ecology, Research
On coral reefs, tiny cleaner fish and shrimps remove parasites from large fish “clients”. The cleaners obtain nourishment by eating the parasites. Although some clients are fearsome predators, the cleaners are rarely prey. Scientific studies of this remarkable... 
Jan 15, 2019 | Ecology, Fellowships, Global change, Research
Deep-water seagrass is sequestering carbon, mitigating climate change. Photosynthetic marine plants (especially seagrasses, tidal marshes and mangroves) “eat” carbon dioxide and release the oxygen component. Their residual biomass becomes part of the sea floor... 
Dec 12, 2018 | Ecology, Fellowships, Global change
Research on coral goby species at Lizard Island shows the social structure of those that live as pairs is more resilient to habitat degradation caused by successive cyclones, as compared to those that live in groups of 3 or more. See Martin L Hing et al Repeated...