Saturday, June 26, 2010

2nd Asia-Pacific Coral Reef Symposium update

Hello all,

The 2nd APCRS just finished in Phuket, Thailand, and MISE lab members put on a nice showing. Congratulations to TF, who won the "best student poster" for his work, and to all other participating lab members. Here are the titles of the posters and talks:

1. T Fujii, JD Reimer. Phylogeny of undescribed zoanthid species in the Pacific. Poster.
2. C Aguilar, M Nonaka, JD Reimer. The Melithaeidae (Cnidaria: Octocorallia) of the Ryukyu Archipelago: molecular and morphological examinations. Oral.
3. Y Irei, Y Nozawa, JD Reimer. Investigation of distribution of five zoanthid species in Okinawa, Japan. Poster.
4. Y Nakano, M Obuchi, M Nakamura. Physical disturbance of the boulder zone on reef slopes. Poster.
5. JD Reimer.Examining biodiversity of understudied coral reef organisms: recent discoveries of “cryptic” zoanthids (Cnidaria: Hexacorallia) in Okinawa. Oral.
6. 58. SY Yang, A Alamaru, AME Noreen, F Stenfani, F Benzoni, D Obura, YT Lein, CH Chen, K Shashank, WKW Loh, A YangAmri, NV Wei, YY Chuang, O Taylor, A Macdonald, JD Reimer, CF Dai, A Abelson, CRC Sheppard, Y Loya, CA Chen. Stylophora pistillata associated with different Symbiodinium clades are deep-divergence lineages: acclimatization or cryptic species? Poster..

Plus, JDR helped organize a workshop on Terpios sponges:
Outbreak of cyanobacteriosponge, Terpios sp., on coral reefs in the West Pacific‐‐‐what, how, where, and consequences of "black disease" in the reefs

and contributed the following presentation:
1. JD Reimer, M Mizuyama. Preliminary results of field surveys of Terpios outbreaks in the Nansei Islands, Japan .

We also observed the very severe bleaching during a dive excursion - and hope the impact is limited, although things look very severe for the short term for Thai reefs.

After the conference, most people are staying in Thailand for diving and research, only JDR came back soon after the conference. Have fun, and congrats on your hard work!