Abstract: Biodiversity plays a critical role in the resilience of natural systems. Although there is a directed effort towards understanding current threats to biodiversity (e.g. climate change), very little research examines the origins of such biodiversity and how it is maintained. I address these fundamental questions by summarising a multi-disciplinary genetic survey of Red Sea and Arabian Sea marine fauna, with a particular focus on endemic and widespread reef fish. This work flows into some of my more recent trials using next-generation sequencing technology to help audit marine biodiversity via degraded DNA sources, thus improving best-practice management for coral reef ecosystems.

Biography: Joseph is an Early Career Postdoctoral Fellow (ECRF) at Curtin University in Western Australia. He holds a Ph.D. from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, completed an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), USA, and recently completed a postdoctoral position at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). His research is directed towards understanding the origins of species-level biodiversity and how it is maintained. He is interested in the integration of classical and novel molecular approaches to resolve patterns of genetic variation within and between marine populations (or species), identifying historical and contemporary factors that influence separation of such populations (or species), incorporating phylogeographic findings into the design of marine protected areas, and tracking evolutionary responses in natural (or experimental) populations.