[Coral-List] Biodiversity of Coral Reef Ecosystems Session

[Rusty Brainard]

Dear colleagues,

Please note the session OS109 "Biodiversity of Coral Reef Ecosystems" 
for the upcoming 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting, February 20-24, in 
Hawaii.  We encourage you to submit abstracts until the deadline of 20 
October 2005 (THIS THURSDAY).  Details are accessible from 
http://www.agu.org/meetings/os06/.

Best wishes,
The conveners: Rusty Brainard, Julian Caley, Nancy Knowlton

OS109 "Biodiversity of Coral Reef Ecosystems"

Description:
Coral reefs are among the most diverse and biologically complex marine 
ecosystems in the world. They provide: tremendous economic and 
environmental resource value to millions of people, shoreline 
protection, aesthetic and recreational significance, commercial and 
subsistence food sources, pharmaceuticals and medicines, and numerous 
jobs and revenue generators. Coral reef ecosystems are deteriorating at 
alarming rates due to multiple anthropogenic and environmental 
stressors. These changes to coral reef ecosystems highlight a need for 
scientists to share past and present research results, as well as future 
resource management and research concepts relating to global reef 
biodiversity. An international, cooperative effort contributing to the 
taxonomically diversified global census of coral reef ecosystems, is 
currently being developed for the Census of Marine Life (CoML). The 
goals of this project are to increase tropical taxonomic expertise and 
improve access to, as well as unify, coral reef ecosystem information 
scattered throughout the globe. This session hopes to gather 
international scientists to begin to address some of the following 
questions. What are the patterns of species diversity for understudied 
reef-associated groups, such as invertebrate and algal communities, 
across gradients of human disturbance? What kinds of species are 
obligately associated with healthy coral reefs and how widely are they 
distributed? What are the prospects for maintenance of species diversity 
on reefs suffering various levels of human impacts? How much and what 
kinds of taxonomic and ecological information are required to manage 
reefs effectively? In this particular session, topics of interest 
include, but are not limited to, taxonomic focus in the biodiversity of 
such understudied groups as sponges, octocorals, mollusks, polychaetes, 
crustaceans, echinoderms, tunicates, seagrasses, macroalgae, coralline 
algae, turf algae, and cyanobacteria, as well as advancement in 
technology and sampling strategies relative to these foci.

Conveners:
Russell E. Brainard

/NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center/
Coral Reef Ecosystem Division
1125B Ala Moana Blvd.
Honolulu, HI, USA  96814
(808)592-7011; rusty.brainard at noaa.gov <mailto:rusty.brainard at noaa.gov>

Julian Caley
/Australian Institute of Marine Science/
PMB 3
Townsville MC, AUS  4810
+617-4753-4148;  j.caley at aims.gov.au <mailto:j.caley at aims.gov.au>

Nancy Knowlton
/Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation/
Scripps Institution of Oceanograpgy
Univeristy of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA, USA  92093-0202
(858) 822-2486; nknowlton at ucsd.edu <mailto:nknowlton at ucsd.edu>