Sally Lau was awarded the Alison Green Zoology Research Fund this year to further her research on East Antarctic marine invertebrates. The research fund supported Sally’s research at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery to identify and sample important marine invertebrate specimens collected off the Shackleton Ice Shelf, East Antarctica back in the 2009-2010 season.
Dr Sally Lau with some of the ophuroids she identified and sampled!
Sally worked together with ophuroid expert Chester Sands from the British Antarctic Survey to identify the brittlestars down to the lowest taxonomic level possible. Sally intends to genetically barcode the samples to aid in their identification.
Ira and Jan were both invited speakers at the Australian Genomic Technologies Association (AGTA) conference in October, 2024, in Cairns. Ira gave the ‘Opening Oration’ to the conference with a talk titled ‘Sequencing Rocks: How sequencing technology shapes our understanding of corals and coral reefs.’
Ira holding the audience captivated with the power of SMC++ demographic analyses 🙂
The 2024 Australian Antarctic Research Conference in Hobart (November, 2024) drew 450 polar scientists and featured many talks, workshops and over 200 research posters. JCU PhD student Nikki Rodewald from the Marine Omics Lab was awarded both the Best Overall and Early Career Researcher poster for show casing her work on dispersal in the benthic seastars, Labidiaster radiosus and Labidiaster annulatus. Well done Nikki!
Jan and Ira were delighted to present a public lecture together at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in July, 2024. Together they tag teamed a lecture titled ‘Genomics for exploring change and connections through space and time’ about how we can use the genomes of marine animals, including corals and octopods, to investigate their evolution and adaptation to past environments, and give insights into the future.
Ira wowing the audience about amazing reef building corals
The audience was very engaged and asked us both tough questions about genetics, corals, octopods and climate change. So how many corals ARE there Ira.?
Jan and Sally were delighted to be shortlisted along with their colleagues Nerida Wilson, (CSIRO) Tim Naish and Nick Golledge (bth Victoria University of Wellington) for the Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research! Unfortunately we did not win, but had a great night all the same. A video explaining our science is here.
2024 Eureka Prizes Awards Ceremony guests (from L to R) Sally Lau, Nerida Wilson & Jan Strugnell
Sally Lau opened the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) conference in PucĂłn, Chile this year with a Plenary Lecture! Sally’s Lecture was the prestigious Weybrecht Lecture and was titled “Learning from the persistence of Southern Ocean benthic invertebrates”. Sally outlined her interdisciplinary work, published in Science, to show how genomics can be used to address past West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse.
Sally wowing the audience on the finer points of demographic modelling octopod populations in Antarctica.
Jan was delighted to receive the SCAR medal for Education and Communication for initiating and coordinating the Women in Antarctic Research Wikibomb. The wikibomb contributed over 100 new detailed biographies of Antarctic women researchers to Wikipedia and sought to raise their profile and celebrate their achievement.
Jan with her SCAR medal for Education and Communication.
Often in science, it is assumed most of the big discoveries happen out in the field, on glorious expeditions into the unknown. While this is an essential step in research, most of the discoveries are made afterwards, where researchers spend months to years compiling their collected data into a coherent, well curated paper for the scientific community. Such is the case for the Antarctic marine invertebrate samples collected for the Marine Omics’ group! Rosie and Jesselyn have been sampling tissue for genomic analyses and preserving specimens for the Museum of Tropical Queensland in JCU’s own Townsville (Bebegu Yumba) Campus; a far stretch in distance and weather from Antarctica!
Rosie (left) and Jesselyn (right) dissecting tissue from echinoderms collected from Heard and McDonald Islands
Each specimen has to be appropriately sampled for genomic analysis and preserved for the museum’s collection. Some of the jarred specimens will eventually be on display for the public, allowing visualization of the creatures living below the ice. However, the most critical part of the project comes from the tiny tissue samples collected before the specimens are preserved.
These echinoderms hold secrets about their evolutionary history and how it has been impacted by past climate and tectonic change.
For example, these echinoderms, as seen on Jesselyn’s dissection board, have tissue samples taken from their arms and from their tube feet. Although infinitesimally small, such DNA houses a wealth of information! This may reveal anything from population dynamics, evolutionary tracks and divergence records, survival rates over time, and occasionally, enable the prediction of species survival through a rapidly changing climate via paleorecords. These samples will play a vital role in piecing together genetic databases and allowing scientists to develop a deeper understanding of Antarctic fauna!
Ben Rennie led a great study as part of his Masters project to investigate filtration rates and the bioremediation potential of the tropical blacklip rock oyster, Saccostrea lineage J, which was published in Aquaculture Environment Interactions. The study found that the Blacklip Rock Oysters significantly reduced total nitrogen, total phosphorous, total suspended solids and chlorophyll a from prawn pond effluent. In addition the oysters have a filtration rate three to five times higher than other frequently cultured oyster species suggesting that they may be well suited to biofiltration roles.
JCU highlighted the story in a media release and a feature article the paper has led to interest in the oysters ability to provide reef credits.
Jan with a Tropical Blacklip Rock Oyster at Bowen Fresh Oysters.
Sally Lau led a fantastic study published in Science which used octopus DNA to discover that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) likely collapsed during the Last Interglacial period around 125,000 years ago – when global temperatures were similar to today. This provides the first empirical evidence that the tipping point of this ice sheet could be reached even under the Paris Agreement targets of limiting warming to 1.5 – 2 degrees C.
This research solves a long-running mystery regarding whether or not the WAIS collapsed during the Last Interglacial. This was a period when global average temperatures were 0.5 – 1.5 oC warmer than preindustrial levels, but global sea level was 5 – 10 metres higher than today. What makes the WAIS important is that it’s also Antarctica’s current biggest contributor to global sea level rise. A complete collapse could raise global sea levels by somewhere between 3 and 5 metres.
In the study we employed a novel population genomic approach to answer this question. By employing demographic modelling and comparing the genetic profiles of Turquet’s octopus found in the Weddell, Amundsen, and Ross seas enabled detection of genetic connectivity dating back to the Last Interglacial. This would only be possible if a complete collapse of the WAIS occurred during the Last Interglacial, opening seaways linking the present-day Weddell, Amundsen and Ross seas. This would have allowed octopus to travel across the opened straits and exchange genetic material, which we can detect in the DNA of today’s populations.
Interdisciplinary team work makes the dream work! From L to R: Nick Golledge (Victoria University of Wellington), Nerida Wilson (University of Western Australia), Sally Lau (James Cook University), Tim Naish (Victoria University of Wellington) and Jan Strugnell (James Cook University).
Brooke Whitelaw led a fantastic study investigating species diversity in the iconic blue-ringed octopus genus, Hapalochlaena. Using genome-wide SNP data and mitochondrial loci, Brooke found 11 relevant taxonomic units – likely all species, suggesting MUCH greater diversity than is currently described! The origin of the genus Hapalochlaena was predicted to be in the Indo-Australian Archipelago and is older than you might thing ~30 mya.
The paper is published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution and you can access it here.
Fig. 2. Delineation of Hapalochlanea species boundaries and genetic structure throughout the Indo Pacific using 10,346 SNPs: (a) SVDQuartet phylogeny of Hapalochlaena throughout the Indo Pacific generated using 10,346 SNPs, coloured branches represent putative taxonomic units A-K: brown (A/Southern coast of Australia), lilac (B/NSW), apple green (C/Taiwan lined), pink (D/Taiwan ringed), light orange (E/Darwin, NT & Kimberly & Exmouth, WA), red (F/Timor Leste), dark orange (G/G* Great Barrier Reef, QLD), purple (H/Cape York, QLD & Shark Bay, QLD) light blue (I/Deep water Yeppoon, QLD & North West, WA), dark blue (J/North West Shelf, WA) and light green (K/Ningaloo, WA). Posterior support values > 0.90 present on nodes. Bars at terminal branches indicate admixture of OTUs inferred using STRUCTURE, colours approximately correspond to OTUs. Lined box adjacent to OTU indicated lined markings while, OTUs without a box exhibit ringed markings. (b) Species delineation using the mitochondrial COI gene. Bayesian phylogeny (MrBayes) of Hapalochlaena throughout the Indo Pacific is coloured according to OTU with black used to represent taxa included from NCBI. Boxes represent putative species in accordance to sPTP, GYMC SC (strict clock) and GYMC RC (relaxed clock) methods. Boxes with diagonal lines represent specimens with lined markings as opposed to rings present in all other specimens. (c) Arrangement of samples according to the first two principal components of a PCoA based on SNP data generated using the dartR package. (d) Map of sample locations coloured by organisational taxonomic units A-K. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)