Host:

Professor David Bellwood Professor David Bellwood is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and a Professor in the School of Marine and Tropical Biology at James Cook University. He has broad interests in the evolution and ecology of coral reefs with a single goal: to find practical solutions to the challenges facing today's coral reefs.

Presenters:

	Professor Malcolm McCulloch Coral Reefs of Western Australia: a litmus test for the survival of coral reefs? How will the unique and extensive coral reefs of Western Australia respond to climate change? New evidence will be presented for what appears to an unprecedented episode of coral bleaching associated with unusually warm oceanic conditions that prevailed during the 2011 summer. Professor Malcolm McCulloch is a Deputy Director of the ARC Centre and the Western Australian Premier's Fellow at the University of Western Australia. Malcolm's research interests focus on the modern part of the geologic record using isotopic and trace element geochemical methods to determine how climate and anthropogenic processes have influenced both past and present environments with particular emphasis on coral reefs. Malcolm has received a number of prestigious awards, most recently in 2010 he was elected as a Fellow to The Royal Society. In 2009 he was awarded the Jaeger Medal for his career achievement in the Earth Sciences and has Fellowships of the Australian Academy of Science (2004), the Geological Society of Australia (2007), the Geochemical Society (2008) and the American Geophysical Union (2002). Malcolm is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher and has published over 250 scientific papers in leading international journals including 23 in Science and Nature.
	Dr Glenn Almany Do fishers get any benefits from marine protected areas? Theoretically, marine protected areas can help sustain fisheries by exporting fish to places open to fishing, but hard evidence of this has been elusive. New research tests whether marine protected areas do export fish and where they go. Glenn Almany is an ARC Future Fellow. His research focuses on coral reef fishes, and he works with fishers in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands to develop science-based management that benefits both reefs and people. He works closely with governments, fisheries managers, environmental conservation organizations and fishing communities.
	Dr Mark Meekan Running on empty - how the world's largest fish sustains a planktivorous lifestyle Mark Meekan is a Principal Research Scientist with the Perth Office of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and is a Partner Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. He is a fish biologist and his research interests focus on the ecology of reef fishes and elasmobranchs in tropical waters. Over the last 10 years he has been involved in tagging studies that have tracked various species of sharks over much of northern Australian waters and the Indian Ocean.
	Dr Sally Keith Bursting with biodiversity....or not! Species are not distributed evenly across our Earth - some places are bursting with biodiversity whilst others have very few species. I try to understand the processes that determine how patterns of biodiversity change over time, with the aim to help us speculate how it might re-organize in response to a changing environment. Sally Keith is a research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and has broad interests in how and why patterns of biodiversity change through space and time. Sally is currently tackling this question with modelling techniques that try to reproduce patterns we observe in real life by simulating fundamental processes of colonization, speciation and extinction. These process-based models help us explore ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical ecology. Sally completed her PhD at Bournemouth University last year and prior to her current position has worked woodland plants, rocky shores invertebrates and primates.
	Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg Evolution of coral reef biodiversity under rapid climate change. Real or improbable? The current rate of environmental change is among the highest for thousands if not millions of years. The big question is, will evolution step in and save the coral reefs like the Great Barrier Reef?  Ove will explore this question using data from past and present to illustrate the risk that the biodiversity of our great coral reefs may be left in the dust of a rapidly changing climate. Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is a Deputy Director in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, and a Queensland Premier's Smart State Fellow (2008-2013). His research interests span a broad range of topics including marine biology, evolution, physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology of plant-animal symbioses, co-evolution, coral bleaching and climate change. Ove has published over 200 papers, including 18 in Science or Nature. He is reviewing editor at Science Magazine.