Christina SkinnerThe University of Queensland | UQ · School of Biological Sciences
Christina Skinner
Doctor of Philosophy
About
19
Publications
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202
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
July 2020 - May 2022
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Position
- Postdoctoral Fellow and Laboratory Manager
April 2016 - June 2020
Publications
Publications (19)
Coral reefs were traditionally perceived as productive hot spots in oligotrophic waters. While modern evidence indicates that many coral reef food webs are heavily subsidized by planktonic production, the pathways through which this occurs remain unresolved. We used the analytical power of carbon isotope analysis of essential amino acids to disting...
Coral reef ecosystems are exceptionally complex with a myriad of trophic pathways and consumer relationships. The application of stable isotopes (SIs) offers numerous advantages over traditional methods towards understanding these intricate systems. We summarize current knowledge derived from the rapidly increasing SI literature base and identify p...
Fish have one of the highest occurrences of individual specialization in trophic strategies among Eukaryotes. Yet, few studies characterize this variation during trophic niche analysis, limiting our understanding of aquatic food web dynamics. Stable isotope analysis (SIA) with advanced Bayesian statistics is one way to incorporate this individual t...
Understanding the drivers of food web community structure is a fundamental goal in ecology. While studies indicate that many coral reef predators depend on pelagic subsidies, the mechanism through which this occurs remains elusive. As many of these species are important fishery targets, a better understanding of their trophodynamics is needed. To a...
Outbreaks of corallivorous Crown of Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster spp.; CoTS) cause substantial coral mortality throughout the Indo-Pacific, particularly on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Refining CoTS population density modelling and understanding the disparities between real-world observations and model predictions is crucial for developing effecti...
The use of light stable isotope ratios from organic tissues to answer questions relating to physiology, biology, ecology, and archaeology has increased exponentially over the last few decades. The vast majority of studies collect carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotopes as the ‘default’ isotopes, omitting sulfur (δ34S) due to time, cost, o...
Reef fish may switch feeding strategies due to fluctuations in resource availability or through ontogeny. A number of studies have explored these trophodynamics using carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) stable isotopes, but additional tracers such as sulfur isotopes (δ³⁴S) show strong potential in systems, where δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N results are ambiguous. W...
The application of stable isotope analysis (SIA) is increasing in elasmobranch trophic ecology, but inconsistency remains in terms of the tissue pre-treatment methods chosen to remove biases introduced by lipids and urea. SIA of a range of non-lethally extracted tissues from a diverse group of elasmobranchs, including mesopredators, is increasing,...
Predators on coral reefs play an important ecological role structuring reef fish communities and are important fishery targets. It is thought that reef predator assemblages increase in density and diversity from inner lagoonal to outer edge reefs. Oceanic atolls may differ though, as nutrients are available throughout. Reef predator populations are...
Sympatric species may partition resources to reduce competition and facilitate co‐existence. While spatial variation and specialization in feeding strategies may be prevalent among large marine predators, studies have focussed on sharks, birds, and marine mammals. We consider for the first time the isotopic niche partitioning of co‐occurring, teleo...
Coral reef food webs are complex, vary spatially and remain poorly understood. Certain large predators, notably sharks, are subsidized by pelagic production on outer reef slopes, but how widespread this dependence is across all teleost fishery target species and within atolls is unclear.
North Malé Atoll (Maldives) includes oceanic barrier as well...
The grazing behaviour of two Caribbean parrotfish, a fished species, the stoplight parrotfish Sparisoma viride and a non‐fished species, the striped parrotfish Scarus iseri, were studied in the presence (fished site) and absence (marine reserve) of chronic spearfishing activity. Diurnal feeding periodicity did not differ between the sites in either...
Although many coral reefs have shifted from coral-to-algal dominance, the consequence of such a transition for coral–algal interactions and their underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. At the microscale, it is unclear how diffusive boundary layers (DBLs) and surface oxygen concentrations at the coral–algal interface vary with algal competi...