Latest updates
Exopolysaccharide (EPS) is complex sugar made by many microbes in the Antarctic marine environment. This project seeks to understand the ecological role of microbial EPS in the Southern Ocean, where it is known to strongly influence primary production.
This research will monitor the effect of climate change on bryophyte communities in the Windmill Islands region of Antarctica through repeated surveys of permanent vegetation transects.
Contaminants like PCBs and DDE have hardly been used Antarctica. Hence, this is an excellent place to monitor global background levels of these organochlorines.
This project will seek to define the risk of human-mediated marine introductions into subantarctic and Antarctic coastal environments.
Recently it has been established that the speciation process may be faster within certain systems or species due to strong selection pressure. Potential candidates are the dinoflagellates present in lakes that have been isolated from the sea in the geologically recent past.
In the last ten years it has become evident that viruses are common in the sea and lakes, occurring in concentrations of one to tens of millions per mL. They attack bacteria and phytoplankton and cause cell destruction or lysis.
Boron is normally lost from sediments with increasing metamorphism. We will investigate how borosilicate rich rocks of the Larsemann Hills can retain boron following granulite-facies metamorphism. Our hypothesis is that high initial boron contents facilitate retention.
Macquarie and Heard Islands were inscribed on the World Heritage List because of a series of geological features unique separately to each island.
Using detailed studies of seed and flower morphology, this project will investigate the Macquarie Island flora to examine its relationships with other sub Antarctic floras.