Baby reef fish can ‘sniff out’ their relatives before they hatch
A recent discovery has uncovered that two species of damselfish can recognise their relatives by smell – and it’s all happening before any of them have even hatched. Dr. Jen Atherton
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au
We focus on understanding and improving complex environmental governance regimes. We draw on the disciplines of political science, public administration, geography, and sociology to explore specific national cases and transnational trends across the US, Australia, Asia, and Europe. This systematic comparative approach is generating important contributions to governance theory and practice, particularly in relation to scale, power, and institutional change. We also work closely with a range of physical, natural, and social scientists and policymakers on inter-disciplinary and applied approaches to environmental governance problems.
Our current research program centers around two main themes:
Principal theoretical contributions to this field emerge out of conducting empirical research on policy and administration in the USA, Australia, and Asia, and focus on the role of inter-agency arrangements, the use of science and stakeholders in decision-making and assessment and planning, and the role of scale in governance. Recent work has involved the development of a Regional Governance Index for assessing the institutional potential of regions. This has led to a new cross-national project analyzing the role of environmental and economic institutions and policy in shaping regional ecosystems, and further theoretical exploration of the governance of governance (‘meta-governance’).
This dimension is concerned with the feasibility of different institutional designs to respond to contemporary environmental issues, such as climate variability and unplanned coastal development. We are particularly interested in how different institutional designs deal with socio-ecological dynamics and the science-policy interface. A recent ARC Super Science Fellowship award funded the collaboration of a team of geographers, planners, economists, lawyers and ecologists on a multi-disciplinary approach to defining and solving the problems and impacts posed by sea level rise, a project which was profiled by The Australian newspaper (2 November 2011) as in the top 10 of innovative collaborative Australian research projects. Key results include papers on dealing with scientific uncertainty in policy, and on transformation of governance systems to deal with heightened risk.
As a political geographer (PhD, University of Queensland), I draw on the disciplines of political science, public administration, geography, and sociology to understand and improve the design of complex and multi-scalar environmental governance regimes. My approach is based on the development of an empirical database of specific national cases and transnational trends across the US, Australia, and Asia. This systematic comparative approach has generated important contributions to governance theory and practice, particularly in the area of decentralisation, regionalisation and risk. I also work closely with a range of physical, natural, and social scientists and policymakers on inter-disciplinary approaches to environmental governance problems.
Philippa Cohen, WorldFish
Cindy Huchery, ARC CoE for Coral Reef Studies and WorldFish
Yasa Belmar, University of Queensland
Eduardo Gallo Cajiao, University of Queensland
Jessica Spijkers, ARC CoE for Coral Reef Studies and Stockholm Resilience Centre
A recent discovery has uncovered that two species of damselfish can recognise their relatives by smell – and it’s all happening before any of them have even hatched. Dr. Jen Atherton
A world-first study has found that petroleum-based oil, even in small amounts, causes coral reef fishes to engage in risky behaviours, endangering both their lives and the health of the reefs around t
The Achilles heel of coral growth is high temperatures, not ocean acidification, according to researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Western Austral
A new study has ingeniously reconstructed a 103-year record of the Queensland east coast Spanish Mackerel spawning fishery, and revealed that catch rates have declined by 70 per cent over the past 80
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Partner Research Institutions
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au