Queensland Smithsonian Fellowship
Title
Queensland Smithsonian Fellowship
Year
2024
Body
Queensland Department of Environment, Science and Innovation
Description
This project will work in collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, to create improved determination of ecosystem health through novel detection of indicator microbial species, focussing on species of management concern. It will involve characterising bacterial communities to measure habitat health. Studying changes in their community assemblage in relation to environmental factors such as water quality can help determining the health of an ecosystem. Outcomes will improve our capacity to understand the impacts of industrial activities in Great Barrier Reef catchments and on the reef itself through better understanding of processes such as coral bleaching. This project also involves using genomic approaches to improve capacity to carry out diet analysis of aquatic organisms. Refinement of molecular approaches for diet analysis will allow elucidating the ecological role of species within the ecosystem and in the case of vulnerable species, will allow identifying the potential impact of anthropogenic activities (for example, fisheries) to inform managerial decisions.