
Catherine Louise WallerUniversity of Hull · Centre for Environmental and Marine Sciences
Catherine Louise Waller
PhD
About
19
Publications
8,396
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
994
Citations
Citations since 2017
Publications
Publications (19)
It was thought that the Southern Ocean was relatively free of microplastic contamination; however, recent studies and citizen science projects in the Southern Ocean have reported microplastics in deep-sea sediments and surface waters. Here we reviewed available information on microplastics (including macroplastics as a source of microplastics) in t...
To describe the distribution of biodiversity and biogeographical patterns of intertidal organisms in southern temperate and polar waters. We hypothesized that there would be differences in community structure between the Antarctic, which is most affected by ice, and the sub-Antarctic and other neighbouring regions. We also hypothesized that rafting...
Knowledge of life on the Southern Ocean seafloor has substantially grown since the beginning of this century with increasing ship-based surveys and regular monitoring sites, new technologies and greatly enhanced data sharing. However, seafloor habitats and their communities exhibit high spatial variability and heterogeneity that challenges the way...
Antarctic shallow coastal marine communities were long thought to be isolated from their nearest neighbours by hundreds of kilometres of deep ocean and the Antarctic circumpolar current. the discovery of non-native kelp washed up on Antarctic beaches led us to question the permeability of these barriers to species dispersal. According to the litera...
Plastics in the Southern Ocean - Volume 30 Issue 5 - Catherine L. Waller, Kevin A. Hughes
The South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf (SOISS) Marine Protected Area (MPA) was the first MPA to be designated entirely within the high seas and is managed under the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). To assist with research and monitoring of the MPA, an international expedition ('SO-AntEco') was undertak...
The South Orkney Islands are a small archipelago located in the Southern Ocean, 375 miles north-east of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 2009, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) established the South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf Marine Protected Area (SOISS MPA), the first MPA located entirely...
Many Antarctic marine invertebrates are considered to be highly stenothermal, subjected to loss of functionality at increased temperatures and so at high risk of mortality in a rapidly warming environment. The bivalve Laternula elliptica is often used as a model taxon to test these theories. Here, we report the first instance L. elliptica from an i...
For many years, hard coastal defences made from various different materials have been used to protect coastal areas and these structures provide additional space for colonisation by intertidal communities. However, preliminary results have shown that community structure varies between the different materials used for coastal defences and the questi...
Despite the general view that the Antarctic intertidal conditions are too extreme to support obvious signs of macrofaunal life, recent studies have shown that intertidal communities can survive over annual cycles. The current study investigates distribution of taxa within a boulder cobble matrix, beneath the outer, scoured surface of the intertidal...
The human-assisted establishment of two non-native predatory carabid beetles (Merizodus soledadinus (Guerin-Ménéville), Trechisibus antarcticus (Dejean)) on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia occurred 30–50 years ago, but the distribution of these species has
never been the subject of regular monitoring, and was last assessed in the mid-1990...
Despite being one of the most intensely studied habitat types worldwide, the intertidal region around Antarctica has received
little more than superficial study. Despite this, the first detailed study of a single locality on the Antarctic Peninsula
reported previously unanticipated levels of species richness, biomass and diversity in cryptic intert...
Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a family of genes classically used to measure levels of organism stress. We have previously identified two HSP70 genes (HSP70A and HSP70B) in sub-tidal populations of the Antarctic limpet (Nacella concinna). These genes are up-regulated in response to increased seawater temperatures of 15 degrees C or more during acut...
Recent studies have revealed a previously unanticipated level of biodiversity present in the Antarctic littoral. Here, we report research on the ecophysiological strategies adopted by intertidal species that permit them to survive in this environment, presenting cold-tolerance data for the widest range of invertebrates published to date from the An...
Abstract We report the composition of terrestrial, intertidal and shallow sublittoral faunal communities at sites around Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula. We examined primary hypotheses that the marine environment will have considerably higher species richness, biomass and abundance than the terrestrial, and that both...
Benthic communities in several fjords and sheltered bays of the north coast of South Georgia Island were examined using SCUBA
and shore sampling in November 2004. It is one of the most northerly islands within the Polar Front and its well studied,
terrestrial biota is described as sub Antarctic. The intertidal and subtidal zones and their fauna are...
Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a family of genes classically used to measure levels of organism stress. We have previously identified two HSP70 genes (HSP70A and HSP70B) in sub-tidal populations of the Antarctic limpet (Nacella concinna). These genes are up-regulated in response to increased seawater temperatures of 15°C or more during acute heat s...
Projects
Projects (4)
Our research cluster aims to deconstruct the cause-and effect network between aquatic environmental change (climate change, human-induced pollution) and organismal stress response at the molecular level, and to utilize this information to generate tools and strategies for mitigating the ecosystem effects of global change. We take a systems approach, collaboratively bridging a variety of disciplines (ecology & evolution, toxicology, genomics, proteomics, analytical and computational chemistry, and computational biology) to achieve these goals. Some of our research at Hull has been prominently featured in a recent research outlook in the Oct. 2017 issue of Nature (https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v550/n7675_supp/full/550S54a.html).
To celebrate the University's research successes, the University of Hull is offering a full-time UK/EU PhD Scholarship or International Fees Bursary for candidates applying for each of the following projects.
The application deadline is 23rd January 2019
Studentships will start on 16th September 2019
Link to apply:
https://www.hull.ac.uk/choose-hull/study-at-hull/admissions/postgraduate/how-to-apply.aspx
Summary of Cluster
Since the onset of mass production of plastics in the 1950’s the flux of plastics to the marine environment has been a growing problem (Cole at al., 2011), such that microplastic contamination of the oceans is now one of the world’s most pressing environmental concerns (Hurley et al., 2018). Recent work highlights how such materials have been found in the full range of ocean environments from the depths of the deepest ocean trenches (Woodall et al., 2014; Fischer et al., 2015; Frid and Caswell 2017)) to coastal seas around the ice-capped poles (Waller et al., 2017; Lusher et al., 2015, Obbard et al., 2014). Microplastic pollution is known to be interacting with organisms and entering primary levels of the marine food chain (Cole et al., 2013) causing a range of unidentified and unquantified ecological outcomes. Critically, we have little understanding of the complex biological, bio-physical and bio-chemical interactions associated with the ingestion of microplastics and how this influences their fate and the fate of marine ecosystems. Significant research is therefore needed to address some of the critical gaps in our knowledge of microplastics in the marine environment. This will be achieved by a cluster of 6 PhDs investigating the physical processes and dynamics of plastic particles from fluvial source zones, through estuarine stores to marine sinks, the ecological impacts on remote and local environments and the ecophysiological and ecotoxicological effects on individual species and ecosystems.
The cluster objectives are:
[1] To quantify ecological and biological effects of microplastics on marine ecosystems and marine invertebrate physiology (1-2; 5-6).
[2] Determine the flux, types and concentrations of micro-plastic debris exiting major riverine and estuarine systems, into the coastal and wider ocean (projects 3-4).
For individual project descriptions see updates below
In the framework of the RECTO project funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office, the Belgica121 expedition aims at carrying out a biodiversity census in the shallow areas of the Western Antarctic Peninsula in March 2019, and to test-case the potential for an agile, low-emission, sampling platform (the Australis sailboat). The expedition bears a strong historic link to the first scientific expedition to overwinter in Antarctica in 1897-99 recording the first intertidal biodiversity data, 121 years ago.