Back to TCMS

Staff involved:

Mr Jon Barnes
Prof Barbara Brown
Dr John Bythell
Dr Alasdair Edwards
Prof Nicholas Polunin
Dr Selina Stead
Dr Jeremy Thomason
Prof Rob Upstill-Goddard

Pre- and post-hurricane images of the shallow backreef on the south side of Buck Island showing the creation of a new rubble berm during Hurricane Hugo (1989). Other areas showed less drastic impacts.

 

Newcastle publications in tropical marine science and coastal management 1996-2004

Marine Research in the Tropics

Current research themes

Staff from Newcastle have been active in research on tropical marine ecosystems for over 25 years. From relatively modest beginnings this research has broadened out over the years to encompass a wide cross-section of staff working at a range of scales, from the molecular to the ocean basin. We have grouped current research by various teams under a series of themes.

Global climate change and coral bleaching

Responses of coral reefs to natural and anthropogenic disturbance

Reef fisheries and Marine Protected Areas

Herbivory and coral/algal dynamics

Spatial marine ecology and remote sensing

Molecular ecology, evolution and systematics

  • Comparative pathology of coral diseases
  • Systematics and biogeography of West African shore fishes
  • Systematics and phylogeny of pseudoplesiopine dottyback fishes (Pseudochromidae)

    Recent Publications

    Dunn SR, Thomason JC, Le Tissier MDA, Bythell JC (2004) Heat stress induces different forms of cell death in sea anemones and their endosymbiotic algae depending on temperature and duration. Cell Death Differentiation 11 (11): 1213-1222

    Bythell JC, Pantos O, Richardson LL (2004) White plague and other 'white' diseases. pp. 351-366 In: Coral health and disease (Eds. Rosenberg E, Loya Y), Springer-Verlag, New York.

    Dulvy NK, Freckleton RP, Polunin NVC (2004) Coral reef cascades and the indirect effects of consumer removal by exploitation. Ecology Letters 7: 410-416.

    Mumby PJ, Edwards AJ, Arias-González JE, Lindeman KC, Blackwell PG, Gall A, Gorczynska MI, Harborne AR, Pescod CL, Renken H, Wabnitz CCC, Llewellyn G (2004) Mangroves enhance the biomass of coral reef fish communities in the Caribbean. Nature 427: 533-536.

    Dulvy NK, Polunin NVC, Mill AC, Graham NAJ (2004) Size structural change in lightly exploited coral reef fish communities: evidence for weak indirect effects. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 61: 466-475.

    Gill AC, Edwards AJ (2003) Pseudoplesiops wassi, new species of pseudoplesiopine dottyback (Teleostei: Pseudochromidae: Pseudoplesiopinae) from the West Pacific. Zootaxa 291: 1-7.

    Pantos O, Cooney RP, Le Tissier MDA, Barer MR, O'Donnell AG, Bythell JC (2003) The bacterial ecology of a plague-like disease affecting the Caribbean coral Montastrea annularis. Environmental Microbiology 5 (5): 370-382.

    Dulvy NK, Sadovy Y, Reynolds JD (2003) Extinction vulnerability in marine populations. Fish and Fisheries 4: 25-64.

    Edwards AJ, Gill AC, Abohweyere PO (2003) A revision of F.R. Irvine's Ghanaian marine fishes in the collections of The Natural History Museum, London. Journal of Natural History 37 (18): 2213-2267.

    Brown BE, Downs CA, Dunne RP, Gibb SW (2002) Preliminary evidence for tissue retraction as a factor in photoprotection of corals incapable of xanthophyll cycling. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 277: 129-144.

    Mumby PJ, Edwards AJ (2002) Mapping marine environments with IKONOS imagery: enhanced spatial resolution can deliver greater thematic accuracy. Remote Sensing of Environment 82: 248-257.

    Polunin NVC (2002) Marine protected areas, fish and fisheries. pp 293-318 In: PJB Hart & JD Reynolds, Handbook of Fish and Fisheries, Volume II, Blackwell, Oxford.

    Dunn SR, Thomason JC, Le Tissier MDA, Bythell JC (2002) Detection of cell death activity during experimentally induced bleaching of the symbiotic sea anemone Aiptasia sp. Proceedings of the 9th International Coral Reef Symposium 2: 145-153.

    Polunin NVC, Pinnegar JK (2002) Trophic ecology and the structure of marine food webs. pp 310-320 In: PJB Hart & JD Reynolds, Handbook of Fish and Fisheries, Volume I, Blackwell, Oxford.

    Bythell JC, Barer MR, Cooney RP, Guest JR, O'Donnell AG, Pantos O, Le Tissier MDA (2002) Histopathological methods for the investigation of microbial communities associated with disease lesions in reef corals. Letters in Applied Microbiology, 34: 359-364.

    Gill AC, Edwards AJ (2002) Two new species of the Indo-Pacific fish genus Pseudoplesiops (Perciformes: Pseudochromidae: Pseudoplesiopinae). Bulletin of the Natural History Museum, London (Zoology), 68 (1): 19-26.

    Dulvy NK, Mitchell RE, Watson D, Sweeting C, Polunin NVC (2002) Spatial scale-dependent top-down control of mesoinvertebrates along a Fijian fishing gradient. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 278: 1-29.

    Dunn SR, Bythell JC, Le Tissier MDA, Burnett WJ, Thomason JC (2002) Programmed cell death and cell necrosis activity during hyperthermic stress-induced bleaching of the symbiotic sea anemone Aiptasia sp. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 272: 29-53.

    McClanahan T, Polunin N, Done T (2002) Ecological states and the resilience of coral reefs. Conservation Ecology 6 (2): 18.

    Cooney RP, Le Tissier MDA, Barer MR, O'Donnell AG, Bythell JC (2002) Characterisation of the bacterial consortium associated with black band disease in coral using molecular microbiological techniques. Environmental Microbiology 4 (7): 401-413.

    Rogers C, Gladfelter W, Hubbard D, Gladfelter E, Bythell J, Dunsmore R, Loomis C, Devine B, Hillis-Starr Z, Phillips B (2002) Acropora in the U.S. Virgin Islands: A Wake or an Awakening? A Status Report Prepared for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Proceedings of the Caribbean Acropora Workshop, US Department of Commerce, Miami, Florida, pp. 99-122.