CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub: PhD Scholarships 2008

Evolutionary history and local environmental conditions predict the distribution of species and communities on land and this underpins landscape management. The Marine Biodiversity Hub’s aim is to provide a similar predictive capacity for Australia ‘s seascape. The Hub will build research capacity and collaboration between marine research agencies, and provide new tools to support the identification, assessment, conservation and sustainable use of Australia ‘s marine assets, including enhancing the National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (NRSMPA) and other ESD management applications. This will assist conservation agencies, resource management agencies, and users develop management approaches that provide comprehensive, adequate and representative conservation of Australia’s seascape. Hub outputs will help agencies and stakeholders meet the requirements of the NRSMPA, Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the Commonwealth Fisheries Act, and various State Fisheries and Conservation Management legislation.

There are four multidisciplinary collaborative projects in the Hub. There are opportunities to undertake graduate research in each of these project areas. Some specific PhD projects have already been identified:

Specific PhD projects already identified include:
The genetics and evolution of extreme endemism in marine temperate Australian fauna.
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Non-extractive monitoring of biodiversity on temperate Australian deepwater reefs: using advanced vision-processing techniques to develop and test reliable biodiversity metrics.
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Machine learning and pattern recognition methods for predicting and mapping marine biodiversity
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Relationships between fish population and the physical structure of rocky reefs, including interaction with fishing pressure inside and outside marine protected areas (this project has also been approved for the QMS PhD Program)
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Genetics and spatial patterning in marine invertebrates. This project involves the use of molecular phylogenetics to reconstruct biogeographic histories of selected taxa in the decapod families Chirostylidae and Galatheidae, or several fish groups identified as indicator groups in the National Marine Bioregionalisation of Australia.
Contact Madeleine van Oppen

Estimating the cost of marine management: using shadow prices to understand the economic cost of spatial mangement and bycatch reduction in fisheries.
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Application of biodiversity offsets to threatened marine vertebrates - how do we reach the goal of environmentally benign industries in the marine environment?
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Heterogeneity and patchiness in benthic communities: what is the value of physical surrogates?
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