Students will be required to prepare one essay of no more than 1500 words. Essay
Students will be required to prepare one essay of no more than 1500 words. Essay topics and suggested reading are provided below. These will require the use of information from recent publications.
Coral Reef Biology (BIOL3x16)
Essay Topic Guide
Please choose your essay topic from the list below. A few papers are provided for each topic to get you started. But note you do not have to use these papers and you are expected to consult and cite additional resources that you find. The topics are intentionally broad and some overlap. We suggest that you focus on one major aspect that is of most interest to you but be sure to keep focused on coral reefs.
Useful general resources
Hutchings, P et al., 2018 The Great Barrier Reef Biology, Environment and Management, CSIRO Press Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef (2007) –available on the GBRMPA web site.
The topic I have chosen is:
4. Tropical Marine Vertebrates, Conservation and threatening processes.
a) Dugongs – their distribution, habitat, biology and Australia’s indigenous harvest.
Key papers are:
Grech, Sheppard, & Marsh 2011. Informing species conservation at multiple scales using data collected for marine mammal stock assessments. PloS One, 6, e17993.
Heinsohn et al. 2004. Unsustainable harvest of dugongs in Torres Strait and Cape York (Australia) waters: two case studies using population viability analysis. Anim. Conserv. 7:417–425.
Harcourt et al. 2015. Marine mammals, back from the brink? Contemporary conservation issues. In: Austral Ark: the state of wildlife in Australia and New Zealand. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 322-353
Lawler, Parra & Noad 2007. Chapter 16 Vulnerability of marine mammals in the Great Barrier Reef to climate change. In Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef, eds. Johnson JE and Marshall PA. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and Australian Greenhouse Oce, Australia.
Marsh HD et al. 2015. Re-evaluation of the sustainability of a marine mammal harvest by indigenous people using several lines of evidence. Biological Conservation, 192. pp. 324-330
Zeh et al. 2015. Is acoustic tracking appropriate for air-breathing marine animals? Dugongs as a case study. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 464:1-10