Responses of a coastal phytoplankton community to increased nutrient input from the Changjiang (Yangtze) River

Terrestrial pollutant runoff to the Great Barrier Reef: An update of issues, priorities and management responses

The great sensitivity of coral reefs to climate change has raised concern over their resilience. An emerging body of resilience theory stems largely from research carried out in a single biogeographic region; the Caribbean. Such geographic bias raises the question of transferability of concepts among regions. In this article, we identify factors that might predispose the Caribbean to its low resilience, including faster rates of macroalgal growth, higher rates of algal recruitment, basin-wide iron-enrichment of algal growth from aeolian dust, a lack of acroporid corals, lower herbivore biomass and missing groups of herbivores. Although mechanisms of resilience are likely to be ubiquitous, our analysis suggests that Indo-Pacific reefs would have to be heavily degraded to exhibit bistability or undergo coral–macroalgal phase shifts.

Global disparity in the resilience of coral reefs

Impacts of nutrient enrichment on coral reefs: new perspectives and implications for coastal management and reef survival

Water quality and coral bleaching thresholds: formalising the linkage for the inshore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia.

In the other 90%: phytoplankton responses to enhanced nutrient availability in the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon

Sustained observations of microbial dynamics are rare, especially in southern hemisphere waters. The Australian Marine Microbial Biodiversity Initiative (AMMBI) provides methodologically standardized, continental scale, temporal phylogenetic amplicon sequencing data describing Bacteria, Archaea and microbial Eukarya assemblages. Sequence data is linked to extensive physical, biological and chemical oceanographic contextual information. Samples are collected monthly to seasonally from multiple depths at seven sites: Darwin Harbour (Northern Territory), Yongala (Queensland), North Stradbroke Island (Queensland), Port Hacking (New South Wales), Maria Island (Tasmania), Kangaroo Island (South Australia), Rottnest Island (Western Australia). These sites span ~30° of latitude and ~38° longitude, range from tropical to cold temperate zones, and are influenced by both local and globally significant oceanographic and climatic features. All sequence datasets are provided in both raw and processed fashion. Currently 952 samples are publically available for bacteria and archaea which include 88,951,761 bacterial (72,435 unique) and 70,463,079 archaeal (24,205 unique) 16 S rRNA v1-3 gene sequences, and 388 samples are available for eukaryotes which include 39,801,050 (78,463 unique) 18 S rRNA v4 gene sequences.

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Michelle Skuza

Papers

In the other 90%: phytoplankton responses to enhanced nutrient availability in the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon

Systematic, continental scale temporal monitoring of marine pelagic microbiota by the Australian Marine Microbial Biodiversity Initiative