AMSA 2010 Conference
4 - 8 July, Wollongong, NSW

The Marine Biodiversity Hub is sponsoring the poster session and cocktail hour at this year’s AMSA Conference. Hub scientists will also be convening two symposia:

Convenor: Rachel Przeslawski - Abiotic surrogates for marine biodiversity:

Improved technology and protocols have greatly facilitated biological sampling in Australian waters, but it is unfeasible to catalogue all marine life using direct sampling techniques. To that end, surrogacy research provides a promising avenue in which suitable environmental variables are identified to predict patterns of marine biodiversity.

Convenor: Piers Dunstan - Marine Biodiversity Symposium: 2010 International Year of Biodiversity (proposed):

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, endorsed by the United Nations. In 2002, the Convention on Biological Diversity committed themselves to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth. This symposium may include topics such as biogeography, genetics, taxonomy, analytical techniques, planning and management, microbial diversity, Antarctic, temperate and tropical biodiversity.

More info: https://www.amsa.asn.au/conference/conf2010/index.html

image

Sponges and biodiversity

Marine Biodiversity Hub partners Australian Institute of Marine Science and Geoscience Australia held an international sponge workshop in Perth early in February 2010 to identify a treasure trove of marine sponges collected in deep waters off Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia.

Sponge taxonomists from Australia and overseas were on-hand to identify over 1,000 samples collected during a Marine Biodiversity Hub survey designed to develop new physical predictors for marine biodiversity. Many of the sponges are either new discoveries for Western Australia or new to science. (Ningaloo Reef is one of the largest and least studied coral reef ecosystems in the world.)

“The project has shown that the deepwater habitats are even richer than previously thought and suggests that there are still many discoveries to be made with more fieldwork,” said Hub researcher Dr Heyward.

Media release http://www.aims.gov.au/docs/media/news2010/20100204.html

image

CERF/ERIN Species prediction workshop
Convenor - Paul Hedge, Knowledge Broker, Marine Biodiversity Hub

On 9 March 2010, the Marine Biodiversity Hub convened a one day workshop between marine scientists and the Environmental Resources Information Network (ERIN) from the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA). The objectives of the workshop were to identify:

1. Current DEWHA practices, challenges and objectives for predicting species distributions;
2. Methods, techniques and environmental surfaces developed or investigated by the CERF Marine Hub that address some of the problems of predicting marine species distributions.
3. The advantages and limitations of available data, surfaces and techniques to predict species distributions; and
4. Opportunities to improve ERIN’s capacity to predict and maintain species distributions through use or adoption of new surfaces, methods and techniques.

The workshop also provided a good opportunity to explore the usefulness of the Marine Biodiversity Hub as a conduit to specific elements of the marine science community (i.e. for times when DEWHA is seeking advice on marine biodiversity topics). At this meeting we were able to bring in key national experts representing the AEDA Hub, Melbourne University, CSIRO and AIMS and thus provide a consensus view of the available scientific options.