Tane Sinclair-Taylor

• Fish Ecologist at Australian Institute of Marine Science

Climate‐driven alterations to disturbance regimes are increasingly disrupting patterns of recovery in many biomes. Here, we examine the impact of disturbance and subsequent level of recovery in live hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) across the last three decades. We demonstrate that a preexisting pattern of infrequent disturbances of...

Cycles of disturbance and recovery govern the temporal dynamics of living coral cover on coral reefs. Monitoring the state of the Great Barrier Reef at regional and individual reef scales has been ongoing by the Long-Term Monitoring Program at the Australian Institute of Marine Science since 1986. After a period of relative stability between 1986 a...

Resilience-based management is essential to protect ecosystems in the Anthropocene. Unlike large-scale climate threats to Great Barrier Reef (GBR) corals, outbreaks of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS; Acanthaster cf. solaris) can be directly managed through targeted culling. Here, we evaluate the outcomes of a decade of strategic COTS m...

Hybridisation and introgression of eukaryotic genomes can generate new species or subsume existing ones, with direct and indirect consequences for biodiversity. An understudied component of these evolutionary forces is their potentially rapid effect on host gut micro-biomes, and whether these pliable microcosms may serve as early biological indicat...

The whale shark Rhincodon typus is found throughout the world's tropical and warm-temperate ocean basins. Despite their broad physical distribution, research on the species has been concentrated at a few aggregation sites. Comparing DNA sequences from sharks at different sites can provide a demographically neutral understanding of the whale shark's...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is increasingly being used to assess community composition in marine ecosystems. Applying eDNA approaches across broad spatial scales now provide the potential to inform biogeographic analyses. However, to date, few studies have employed this technique to assess broad biogeographic patterns across multiple taxonomic groups....

Environmental temperature is an important determinant of physiological processes and life histories in ectotherms. Over latitudinal scales, variation in temperature has been linked to changes in life‐history traits and demographic rates, with growth and mortality rates generally being greatest at low latitudes, and longevity and maximum length bein...

Determining how growth rates and body size vary spatially and among reef fish species is important to understanding functional traits and demographic trade-offs. Variability in reef fish growth trajectories may be influenced by intrinsic (e.g., biological, phylogenetic) and extrinsic factors (e.g., environmental), as well as their interaction via e...

Annual update of the status and trends of hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef, 2020/21.

Coral spawning is a fundamental process in the preservation of coral reef systems. However, reproductive information is still rare for many coral species and across a number of locations. No reproductive information is yet available from the western coast of the central and southern Red Sea. We document here the daytime spawning of Pocillopora verr...

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is an iconic ecosystem that has been managed using a multi-use zoning plan over the last four decades. The Long-Term Monitoring Program (LTMP) of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) is one of the world’s longest running and most comprehensive coral reef monitoring programs, having documented the status a...

Here we document three cases of mimicry in coral reef shes not previously reported in the literature involving two groupers (Epinephelus leucogrammicus and Plectropomus marisrubri) and a soap-sh (Diploprion drachi) as mimics, and two wrasses (Larabicus quad-rilineatus and Cheilinus quinquecinctus) and a blenny (Meiacanthus nigrolineatus) as models....

Non-sex-linked color polymorphism is common in animals and can be maintained in populations via balancing selection or, when under diversifying selection, can pro-mote divergence. Despite their potential importance in ecological interactions and the evolution of biodiversity, their function and the mechanisms by which these polymorphisms are mainta...

Understanding the spatial and environmental variation in demographic processes of fisheries target species, such as coral grouper (Genus: Plectropomus), is important for establishing effective management and conservation strategies. Herein we compare the demography of Plectropomus leopardus and P. laevis between Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marin...

Annual update of the status and trends of hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef.

Territorial and roving grazing fishes farm, and feed on, algae, sediment, or detritus, thus exerting different influences on benthic community structure, and are common clients of cleaner fish. Whether cleaners affect grazing-fish diversity and abundance, and indirectly the benthos, was tested using reefs maintained free of the bluestreak cleaner w...

Genetic structure within marine species may be driven by local adaptation to their environment, or alternatively by historical processes, such as geographic isolation. The gulfs and seas bordering the Arabian Peninsula offer an ideal setting to examine connectivity patterns in coral reef fishes with respect to environmental gradients and vicariance...

Aim The unique biodiversity in the Red Sea is the result of complex ecological and evolutionary processes driven by Pleistocene climatic change. Here we investigate the species diversity, phylogenetic relationships and phylogeographical patterns of giant clams in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) and the Red Sea to explore scenarios of marine speciati...

Al Wajh Bank in the northern Red Sea contains an extensive coral reef system that potentially supports a novel fish community. The large (1500km²) and shallow (< 40m depth) lagoon experiences greater temperature and salinity fluctuations, as well as higher turbidity, than most other Red Sea reefs. Since these conditions often influence coral commun...

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are typically dispersed throughout their circumtropical range, but the species is also known to aggregate in specific coastal areas. Accurate site descriptions associated with these aggregations are essential for the conservation of R. typus, an Endangered species. Although aggregations have become valuable hubs for r...

Mesoscale eddies are critical components of the ocean’s “internal weather” system. Mixing and stirring by eddies exerts significant control on biogeochemical fluxes in the open ocean, and eddies may trap distinctive plankton communities that remain coherent for months and can be transported hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Debate regarding how...

The coral reefs of the Red Sea are host to a diverse fish fauna. Ichthyofauna studies began in the Red Sea during expeditions undertaken by some of the earliest European naturalists. In the more than 200 years that have passed, much has been learned about Red Sea fishes. Nonetheless, many knowledge gaps remain. Although it is a relatively young sea...

For tropical marine species, hotspots of endemism occur in peripheral areas furthest from the center of diversity, but the evolutionary processes that lead to their origin remain elusive. We test several hypotheses related to the evolution of peripheral endemics by sequencing ultraconserved element (UCE) loci to produce a genome-scale phylogeny of...

Hybridization among clownfish (genus Amphiprion) is common in the aquarium trade and has also been reported in natural environments. Putative hybrids between Amphiprion chrysopterus and Amphiprion sandaracinos have been identified in a previous genetic study. However, convenient diagnostic tools for hybrid detection for this case are still missing....

Surveys to document coral-reef fish assemblages are often limited to visually conspicuous species, thus excluding a significant proportion of the biodiversity. Through standardized collections of cryptobenthic reef fishes in the central and southern Red Sea, a total of 238 species and operational taxonomic units (OTUs) from 35 families were collect...

Relatively small volumes of water may contain sufficient environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect target aquatic organisms via genetic sequencing. We therefore assessed the utility of eDNA to document the diversity of coral reef fishes in the central Red Sea. DNA from seawater samples was extracted, amplified using fish-specific 16S mitochondrial DNA pri...

The Arabian Sea is a heterogeneous region with high coral cover and warm stable conditions at the western end (Djibouti), in contrast to sparse coral cover, cooler temperatures, and upwelling at the eastern end (southern Oman). We tested for barriers to dispersal across this region (including the Gulf of Aden and Gulf of Oman), using mitochondrial...

Larval dispersal is a critical yet enigmatic process in the persistence and productivity of marine metapopulations. Empirical data on larval dispersal remain scarce, hindering the use of spatial management tools in efforts to sustain ocean biodiversity and fisheries. Here we document dispersal among subpopulations of clownfish (Amphiprion percula)...

Hybridisation is a significant evolutionary process that until recently was considered rare in the marine environment. A suture zone in the eastern Indian Ocean is home to numerous hybridising sister species, providing an ideal opportunity to determine how hybridisation affects speciation and biodiversity in coral reef fishes. At this location, hyb...

Abstract. Recent coral spawning observations in the central Red Sea show that most scler- actinian species release their gametes in the spring, with a majority of species spawning in April. There is, however, a lack of reproductive data for several other coral species, as well as a general lack of data for other invertebrates. Here, we document the...

Conservation commonly requires trade-offs between social and ecological goals. For tropical small-scale fisheries, spatial scales of socially appropriate management are generally small—the median no-take locally managed marine area (LMMA) area throughout the Pacific is less than 1 km2. This is of particular concern for large coral reef fishes, such...

Background Large marine species have been a focus of scientists and public for their unique role in the ecosystem as well as in conservation. To study the behaviors of large marine species, electrical tagging is a direct and reliable method. Researchers have been utilizing technology advances in biologging tags on multiple spatiotemporal scales. Th...

Background A recent global study of whale shark population genetics has allowed for better understanding of genetic connections between aggregations in both the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic. This overview included an aggregation found within the Red Sea near Al Lith, Saudi Arabia, however the Mafia Island, Tanzania, aggregation was not part of the stu...

Aim The Red Sea is characterised by a unique fauna and historical periods of desiccation, hypersalinity and intermittent isolation. The origin and contemporary composition of reef‐associated taxa in this region can illuminate biogeographical principles about vicariance and the establishment (or local extirpation) of existing species. Here we aim to...

Although whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) have been documented to move thousands of kilometres, they are most frequently observed at a few predictable seasonal aggregation sites. The absence of sharks at the surface during visual surveys has led to the assumption that sharks disperse to places unknown during the long 'off-seasons' at most of these lo...

Aim Suture zones are areas where closely related species from different biogeographical regions come into contact and interbreed. This concept originated from the study of terrestrial ecosystems but it remains unclear whether a similar phenomenon occurs in the marine environment. Here we investigate a potential suture zone from a previously unknown...

Mucus performs numerous protective functions in vertebrates, and in fishes may defend them against harmful organisms, although often the evidence is contradictory. The function of the mucous cocoons that many parrotfishes and wrasses sleep in, while long used as a classical example of antipredator behaviour, remains unresolved. Ectoparasitic gnathi...

1. How mothers balance the trade-off between offspring size and number to maximize maternal fitness has long been of interest to ecologists seeking to understand the evolution of offspring size. Predictions of the optimal offspring size depend fundamentally on the relationship between offspring size and offspring performance, which may in turn vary...