Associate Professor Stephen Smith

Full description

Associate Professor Stephen Smith is a marine benthic ecologist with primary interests in the amazing biodiversity that can be found in our marine and estuarine environments. Much of this diversity is under threat from a wide range of human impacts. Stephen is dedicated to understanding these impacts with a view to fostering long-term sustainability. Because little is known about the distribution and dynamics of marine biodiversity in Australia, especially in sub-tidal environments, much of his research focuses on measuring and monitoring diversity and determining the main factors that cause it to change - this includes both natural and human-induced impacts. This is a very broad area of research and my specific interests lie in the following key areas:

• Developing methods to measure and monitor biodiversity in a rigorous and cost-effective way;
• Measuring natural variation in communities – it is only by measuring this that we can effectively detect changes caused by human activities;
• Measuring and monitoring the effects of different types of human impact on marine communities;
• Identifying biodiversity hotspots (areas of high diversity that are also under threat) and, in collaboration with management agencies, facilitating their sustainable management;
• Investigating the reasons why some locations have higher diversity than others; and
• Predicting future impacts based on an understanding of the dynamics of the target communities.

Much of Stephen’s work focuses on the highly diverse communities associated with subtropical reefs on the east coast of Australia. He is also actively involved in research in the Antarctic, subantarctic and tropical SE Asia. His main interest is in marine invertebrates and especially the molluscs. This latter group are not only highly diverse, occurring in most if not all marine habitats, but they are also an excellent model group for studies of biodiversity and human impact.