Oceans of Biodiversity
Research GroupThe ocean floor is less well mapped than the surface of other planets’
I have often read and heard it stated that the seabed is less well mapped than the surface of other planets. However, I had not found papers that provided evidence for this or cited primary sources. I thank Peter Harris for providing links to the evidence that shows...
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Photos from early years of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System
Recently, I was asked what photographs there were from the early years of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), when it was set up as part of the Census of Marine Life. Please sent me any additional photographs if you have them to add. Please feel free to...
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The “SSV Robert C. Seamans” returns to Auckland!
Am amazing opportunity for students is to spend a Semester at sea, doing research and learning about the ocean, sailing, navigation, Pacific cultures, maritime history, marine biology, oceanography and more. One such programme has visited New Zealand for a few years...
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Tips when selecting biodiversity data from GBIF and OBIS
What kind of data are available? The data comprise of records of the occurrence of a species or higher taxon (sometimes animals and plants can only be identified to Genus or Family) in a place at a particular date. Most records include latitude and longitude...
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Tips for designing a scientific POSTER
Having reviewed posters for awards several times at conferences and university competitions, here is my hit list of where many posters win and fail in content and design. In content The key message and findings are hard to find. The novel aspects of the research are...
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What factors influence citation rates of scientific papers?
It is increasingly important for scientists careers and their institutons reputations that their papers are highly cited. So what factors increase citation rates? We recently analysed citation rates of about 6,000 papers published in the journal Biological...
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Why study marine science at the University of Auckland?
Why study marine science? Jobs There are jobs in government and crown agencies, regional councils, universities, consulting companies, teaching, and commercial companies (fisheries, aquaculture, food processing) Wisdom Most of our planet is ocean, so understanding the...
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Journals free to authors and readers
The wave of open-access journals shifts the cost of access from readers to authors. The older former print publishers charge authors over $2,000 or more per paper. Comparison with new scholarly journals who are also open-access but only charge authors $100's to around...
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How environmental variation decreases with depth in the ocean
This paper provides a global context for how much environmental variables vary geographically, including with depth in the ocean. Depth profiles of temperature, oxygen, nutrients, current velocity, and seabed slope, are provided. Geographic patterns for these...
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New world map of the seagrass biome
Dinusha Jayathilake has published a new world map of the seagrass biome. It fills significant gaps in previous maps, and thus doubles the estimated area of seagrass globally to be 1,650,000 km². However, whether seagrass still occurs at all the map locations, or has...
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Amphipod crustaceans – one third of species remain to be discovered
Congratulations to Tri Arfianti who has just published her second paper as part of her PhD. This analysis of rates of description of amphipod crustaceans predicts one third of species remain to be described. In addition, the data indicated that pelagic amphipods are...
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New Zealand benthic and plankton copepods can be used to monitor toxicity
Congratulations to Maria Charry for her paper showing how native New Zealand benthic and planktonic copepods can be used to monitor toxicity in estuaries. The benthic harpacticoid and planktonic calanoid species were sensitive to metals in sediments and water...
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Marine nature conservation must focus on fully-protected reserves, not resource management
Why protect nature? There are many good reasons for people to conserve biodiversity. Biodiversity is what our lives and ecosystems depend upon, and it includes natural resources that must be used wisely so that they can continue being harvested in the future. Over...
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Auckland award winners at New Zealand Marine Sciences annual conference
Congratulations to Rikki and India for following up the submission of their MSc theses by winning three awards for their presentations at the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society annual conference in Napier, 2018. India won the Department of Conservation Award for the...
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Congratulations to Irawan Asaad on being awarded his PhD!
Our group was very fortunate to enjoy the company of Irawan for the past four years. He sailed through his PhD Viva Voce interview and his name has been placed on the Dean’s list in recognition of the excellence of the thesis. This is awarded to very few people each...
read moreSummer scholarships and internships
SUMMER SCHOLARSHIPS The University of Auckland funds undergraduate students from New Zealand and overseas to conduct research with particular academic staff during the New Zealand summer (December-February). The scholars are paid NZ$6,000 for 10 weeks full-time. The...
read moreHow to (not) fail a PhD (and MSc)
Thinking what not to do may help to avoid doing the wrong things. So our research group recently brainstormed on how to fail a PhD. Ideas on how to fail were as follows: ............. Depend entirely on your supervisor, so then everything that goes wrong is their...
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Where Marine Reserves would protect most biodiversity in the Coral Triangle
The Coral Triangle, encompassing Indonesia, the Philippines and neighbouring countries, contains the highest density of marine species in the world, and exceptionally high numbers of endemic species (Asaad et al. 2018). Thus conserving its marine life is a priority...
read moreUseful marine environmental data sources
GMED: Global Marine Environment Datasets Ecological Marine Units in 3D NODC: NOAA Oceanographic Data Center NSIDC: National Snow & Ice Data Center OceanColor: NASA Oceancolor Portal APRDC: In-situ oceanographic or atmospheric data from a Dapper OpenDap server...
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