The recognition of the high value mangrove forests and wide array ecosystem services they provide has motivated investment in worldwide restoration efforts. However, current metrics functional (other than seedling survival rates plant community composition) are often not readily available for local managers, highlighting an urgency to identify easy-to-measure indicators assess functionality res...

Disturbances in ecological systems can cause new resources to become available and can free the resources held by strongly competitive species. In intertidal boulder fields, wave-action causes disturbance by overturning boulders and freeing space for re-colonisation. In this study, mensurative experiments showed that boulder disturbance may also cause new biogenic-habitat resources to become av...

Hotspot oceanic islands typically experience subsidence due to several processes related to migration of the oceanic plate away from the mantle plume and surface flexural loading. However, many other processes can interrupt subsidence, some of which may be associated with catastrophic events. A study of the biostratigraphy and sedimentology of Holocene deposits on Robinson Crusoe Island (RCI) o...

Wax discs have been used previously on intertidal rocky shores to record the grazing activity of gastropods. This study has evaluated this methodology for recording grazing of four common intertidal microalgal grazers on intertidal shores in New South Wales, Australia. In the laboratory, the four species examined-the patellid limpet, Cellana tramoserica (Sowerby), the trochid, Austrocochlea por...

Coenobita compressus (H. Milne Edwards) walk forward on six legs using an alternating tripod gait similar to that of insects. The first walking leg provides the driving force for locomotion aided secondarily by the second walking leg, while the chelipeds act largely as supports. The left appendages are longer and heavier than the right, and they extend further laterally from the midline during ...