Corals of the future

Primary Researcher: Dr Kate Quigley

Institution: James Cook University

Australia’s World Heritage listed coral reefs offer significant economic and commercial value for fisheries, jobs, tourism, and coastal protection.

Led by Dr Kate Quigley from James Cook University, the ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) project Adaptation potential of Australia’s coral reefs to a changing climate aims to integrate novel methods in genetics, animal movement, and disease modelling to provide new knowledge on the speed at which coral reefs adapt to climate change.

Dr Quigley is proud of the coral research tradition she continues. One of the coral sites she studies is in Geoffrey Bay, Magnetic Island, where in 1981 scientists discovered that many coral species reproduce on the same few nights each year. The discovery of mass spawning revolutionised coral research. There is also a direct personal connection: Dr Quigley completed her PhD under the supervision of Bette Willis, one of those trailblazing scientists.

Dr Quigley is undertaking her DECRA part-time and has been awarded $438,547 in ARC funding over 6 years and hopes her research will contribute to improving the effectiveness of conservation protection and management of nationally and internationally significant reefs - like Ningaloo Reef, Lord Howe Island, and the Great Barrier Reef - to equip them for climate change impacts. 

“Right now, reefs are in trouble globally, and we've had to ask ourselves these really challenging conservation questions: what to save? and what composition of species do you need to save? I've been working in that space of trying to understand the ecology and the genetics of different species for a few years and when I looked to the DECRA I thought this needs to be a national project across all our four major reef World Heritage Areas,” Dr Quigley said. 

“This DECRA is a culmination of breaking down the problem, looking at different species, different processes and bringing them all together into one national project – which hopefully by the end, is a comprehensive assessment of where reefs could go in the future with some great management applications for how we can care for reefs.”

Dr Quigley is also part of the team at the Minderoo Foundation as Research Director of the Exmouth Research Lab, which is at the doorstep of Ningaloo World Heritage Reef. 

“I have a wonderful opportunity where I spend 50 percent of my time focusing on the ARC DECRA and 50 percent of my time working at Minderoo Foundation where I get to develop and implement plans for strategic research initiatives that align with national conservation priorities.,” Dr Quigley said. 

“As part of the DECRA, I had already identified that we need to work broadly across all our World Heritage Reef estates. There's a nice synergy where working for Minderoo allows me to focus and go even deeper into Ningaloo Reef and allows us to ask further questions that amplifies the DECRA impact.” 

Undertaking a DECRA research project is no easy feat. Dr Quigley said that this DECRA research project has been a highly collaborative process. It has involved working with people from different fields to help piece together the puzzle of how and if coral reefs will adapt to climate change.   

“This project is multidisciplinary, highly collaborative, and the deeper I go into it, the more I am communicating with different fields. It allows you to work with many, many different people and indeed that's the nature of science these days. Generally, you're working across multiple disciplines at the same time, and you bring it back to that central message at the end,” Dr Quigley said. 

It is anticipated that research outcomes from this DECRA project will highlight the immediate need for coral reef protection, provide robust climate change risk management strategies for reefs, and position Australia as a global leader in reef conservation.

“As we're studying this, we can take direct action to help alleviate the pressure that reefs are currently facing due to warming. And we can do this by taking strong measures to curb emissions, climate change emissions, and this will help us as we're designing conservation actions to help reefs that are in peril. We can at the same time start to take the pressure off and stabilise warming, and that's going to give corals the absolute best chance of survival into the future,” Dr Quigley said. 

“That's why climate stabilisation now is so critical. And we know, again, corals are canaries in the coal mines. We must act now and there's very little time to lose. We are at that precipice with coral reefs, and I hope that speaks to the urgency of the action that needs to happen.”

For more information on DECRA, visit: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) | Australian Research Council