CRN Water Sciences: Marine Science & Coastal Ecology
Key Contacts:
A/Prof Thomas Schlacher, University of the Sunshine Coast,
tschlach@usc.edu.au, www.usc.edu.au;
Prof Rod Connolly, Griffith University, r.connolly@griffith.edu.au, www.gu.edu.au
THE TEAM
Prof Rod Connolly -- food webs, resilience, connectivity, estuaries, fishes, marine reserves;
A/Prof Thomas Schlacher -- sandy beach ecosystems, ecology of interface regions, food webs, deep-sea, carrion and scavengers;
A/Prof Dave Schoeman -- climate change ecology, beaches, adaptations, marine reserves;
Dr Chantal Huijbers -- fish ecology, movements, coastal scavengers and urbanisation; MPAs;
Dr Mike Weston -- wildlife ecology, coastal birds, human-wildlife interactions, conservation;
Dr Andrew Olds - seascape ecology and connectivity, ecological resilience, marine reserves and conservation planning, fish and fisheries ecology
A/Prof Mohammad Katouli -- microbial ecology and pathogenesis, source tracking, water quality;
Postgraduate Student Opportunities
Which of these research projects and ideas will you be part of?
1.) Extreme trophic subsidies: when island biogeography meets food-web ecology on remote Pacific Islands.
2.) Measuring the pace of climate change effects: thermal biology meets range-edge models in ghost crabs.
3.) Connectivity and resilience in ecosystems: what makes natural systems resist and recover from disturbance?
4.) A global perspective on cross-boundary exchanges: inter-habitat comparisons of organic carbon processing.
5.) Cane toads as invasive predators at the land-ocean interface: consequences for the transfer of organic matter.
6.) Whole ecosystem effects of scavengers: some serious scaling-up of food-web experiments.
7.) Assembly rules for scavenger guilds: testing fundamental processes in ecology with new models.
8.) Reserves and cross-boundary fluxes: the many faces of connectivity in achieving conservation success in marine systems.
9.) The ecology of surf-zone fishes on sandy beaches: brining new technologies to a high-energy environment.
10.) Putrefaction and carrion palatability: how much do scavengers care about microbiology?
11.) Food-web effects of apex predators: are introduced foxes functionally equivalent to dingos on sandy beaches?
12.) More to land-ocean gradients: estuaries as scavenging corridors in the coastal zone.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS in 2013
Schlacher T.A., Baco A.R., Rowden, A.A., O'Hara T.D., Clark MR., Kelley C., Dower J.F. (2013), Seamount benthos in a cobalt-rich crust region of the central Pacific: conservation cha =llenges for future seabed mining. Diversity and Distributions. doi: 10.1111/ddi.12142
Burfeind D.D., Pitt K.A., Connolly R.M., Byers J.E. (2013) Performance of non-native species within marine reserves. Biological Invasions, 15: 17-28.
Poloczanska E.S., Brown C.J., Sydeman, W.J., Kiessling W., Schoeman D.S., Moore P.J., Brander K. Bruno J.F., Buckley L.B., Burrows M.T, Duarte C.M., Halpern B.S., Holding J., Kappel C.V., O'Connor M.I., Pandolfi J.M., Parmesan C., Schwing F., Thompson S.A., Richardson A.J. (2013) Global imprint of climate change on marine life. Nature Climate Change, DOI 10.1038/NCLIMATE1958.
Weston, M.A., McLeod, E. M., Blumstein, D. T. & Guay, P.J. (2012) A review of flight-initiation distances and their application to managing disturbance to Australian birds, Emu 112: 269-286.
Huijbers C.M., Schlacher T.A., Schoeman D.S., Weston M.A., Connolly R.M. (2013) Urbanisation alters processing of marine carrion on sandy beaches. Landscape and Urban Planning 119:1-8
Olds A.D., Albert S., Maxwell P.S., Pitt K.A., Connolly R.M. (2013) Mangrove-reef connectivity promotes the effectiveness of marine reserves across the western Pacific. Global Ecology and Biogeography 22:1040-1049
Key Contacts
A/Prof Thomas Schlacher
University of the Sunshine Coast
tschlach@usc.edu.au
www.usc.edu.au
Prof Rod Connolly (Griffith University):
r.connolly@griffith.edu.au
www.gu.edu.au
