Worldwide, coral reefs provide essential goods and services for the sustenance and
economic growth of the people who live near them. In Queensland, for instance, fisheries
and tourism alone generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue every year.
In developing countries, reef fisheries provide the principal source of protein
for millions of people, especially in our region. Moreover, coral reefs potentially
contain enormous untapped wealth in species whose naturally-produced chemicals may
be developed into valuable pharmaceuticals.
Protecting coral reefs, and the enormous wealth they create for Queensland and indeed for human civilization, requires an understanding of how coral reef ecosystems function—how species interact with one another, respond to environmental changes, and maintain the breathtaking biodiversity that is their signature. At the same time, the high biodiversity of coral reefs makes them incredibly difficult to study, with thousands of species interacting with one another in highly complex ways. Ecological modeler Dr Sean Connolly, a Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology and a researcher in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, makes extensive use of James Cook University’s High Performance Computing capability in order to tackle these challenges.
For example, on coral reefs, as in all ecosystems, some species are common and some are rare. To understand how the biodiversity, productivity, and stability of ecosystems will respond to habitat loss or increased stresses (for instance, due to more frequent mass die-offs of corals due to global warming), it is important to understand how interactions among coral species determine patterns of commonness and rarity. Dr Connolly and his students, using data collected by colleagues at JCU, have tested prominent ecological theories that purport to explain these patterns. This work has received international attention, leading to publications in the top scientific journals, Science and Nature, including one paper whose lead author was a PhD student in Dr Connolly’s research group.
In other work, Dr Connolly’s group focuses on the impacts of human activity that is targeted to particular species, like fishing. For example, the recent re-zoning of the Great Barrier Reef raises questions about how fisheries will respond, and thus how fisheries management should respond, to the changes in where fishers go to catch fish. Dr Connolly has been developing new models for the dynamics of fisheries that help us understand how, and why, different kinds of fishery populations will respond. One key outcome of this work is the finding that some fisheries may actually become more productive when no-take areas are included as part of the management strategy. Figure 1 presents a comparison of fisheries yield with and without no-take zones, clearly showing this result.
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Figure 1: A comparison of fisheries yield with and without no-take zones. |
Other research focuses on estimating rates of population growth or decline for reef sharks, using sophisticated analytical methods that account for the uncertainty that is part and parcel of biological research.
Much of this work is far more computationally extensive and thorough than any previous work on the respective topics, and this has been due in large part to the availability of QCIF-funded HPC facilities at JCU.
Contacts
Dr Sean
Connolly
School of Marine
Biology and Aquaculture, James Cook University
ARC Centre of Excellence for
Coral Reef Studies
Publications
Connolly, S. R., T. P. Hughes, D. R. Bellwood, and R. H. Karlson. 2005. 'Community structure of corals and reef fishes at multiple scales'. Science, 309:1363-1365.
Connolly, S. R. 2005. 'Process-based models of species distributions and the mid-domain effect'. American Naturalist, 166: 1-11.Bellwood, D.R., T.P. Hughes, S.R. Connolly, and J. Tanner. 2005. 'Environmental and geometric constraints on Indo-Pacific coral reef biodiversity'. Ecology Letters, 8: 643-651.
Written by S. Connolly, August 2006