Corals light the way to a healthy partnership
Corals know how to attract good company. New research finds that corals emit an enticing fluorescent green light that attracts the mobile microalgae, known as Symbiodinium, that are critical to the e
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
Erika Woolsey grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended Duke University in North Carolina, where she majored in biology and minored in art history. She became interested in coral reefs during exchange programs in Australia and Bermuda. She moved to Sydney in 2006 and received her Masters of Applied Science from the University of Sydney where her thesis topic described coral spawning conditions in the southern Great Barrier Reef. She enrolled in the JCU PhD program in March 2010 and is now focusing on how temperature affects coral larval ecology and biogeography.
Temperature is a major contributor to geographical ranges of marine species and warming seas are already contributing to pole-ward range extensions of many marine invertebrates. For corals, range shift in response to temperature change, ie climate tracking, is a potential result of contemporary warming and may be an important mechanism for persistence of reefs over geological time. The effects of climate change are expected to vary with location and the southern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is warming at a greater rate than northern regions. Counter-intuitively, these “reefs on the edge” may be under greater threat from temperature-related stressors than northern reefs despite a historically cooler regime. Such regions may also be particularly informative when forming temperature-related projections on reef futures. The proposed research will compare thermo-tolerance of early life stages between three thermally distinct regions, Lizard Island, One Tree Island and Lord Howe Island, to investigate potential opportunities for range expansion in coral reefs. Species-specific data on coral life history characteristics will also be compiled to explore how certain traits influence coral biogeography, in particular, the prominent decline in species richness with increasing latitude. Results of this study will be used to predict future distributions of corals under changing temperature regimes.
Corals know how to attract good company. New research finds that corals emit an enticing fluorescent green light that attracts the mobile microalgae, known as Symbiodinium, that are critical to the e
A study led by researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University found fish become anxious and more cautious when water quality is degraded by sediment, an e
Queensland’s coastal shark numbers are continuing a 50-year decline, in sharp contradiction of suggestions of ‘exploding’ shark populations, according to an analysis of Queensland Shark Control
The future of the world’s coral reefs is uncertain, as the impact of global heating continues to escalate. However, according to a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the response of the
Who: Julian Cribb Where: JCU HY002, UQ CMS Meeting Room When: Monday 20 March 2006, 11.00am-12.00pm
The Lizard Island Doctoral Fellowships Program provides financial support for field-intensive coral reef research at Lizard Island Research Station on the Great Barrier Reef by outstanding PhD student
Who: Go Suzuki, Kyoto University Where: ARC Centre of Excellence Conference Room, James Cook University, Townsville with video link to Centre for Marine Studies, UQ, Brisbane When: 1.00pm Monday 23
Who: Lead by Meir Sussman Where: ARC Centre of Excellence Conference Room, JCU, Townsville with video link to Centre for Marine Studies, UQ, Brisbane When: 4.00pm, Thursday 26 April 2007
Dr. Frank Thomalla is a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) where he leads the Stockholm-based group of the “Risk, Livelihoods and Vulnerability Programme” and at the re
Dr Troy Day is a theoretical evolutionary ecologist at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada (http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~tday/index.html). His primary research interests are in the evolution of in
Who: Lead by Dr Sophie Dove Where: Video link ARC Centre of Excellence Conference Room, JCU, Townsville and Centre for Marine Studies, UQ, Brisbane When: 4.00pm, Thursday 10 May 2007
Who: Lead by Professor Terry Hughes Where: Video link ARC Centre of Excellence Conference Room, JCU, Townsville and JCU Cairns, Room B1.108 When: 12.00pm, Monday 14 May 2007
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