“The future for coral reefs is often bleak but research on coral reef ecosystems is in one of the most exciting and dynamic periods in its history.”

Coral reef ecosystems offer an unparalleled opportunity for evolutionary and ecological investigation and considerable room for innovation. I believe that my research has been highly cited because it offered alternative perspectives and presented novel approaches to key questions in coral reef ecology. By drawing on the insights from many disparate disciplines I believe I have been able to provide a more pluralistic understanding of coral reefs and as a result, reached a broader audience.

It was while working at the British Museum (Natural History) London, as it was then known, that I developed a fascination for evolution and ecology in all its permutations, and identified coral reefs as the ideal environment in which to explore my ideas. I arrived in Australia in 1981 to undertake research on the fishes of the Great Barrier Reef to discover that many of the fishes I wanted to study could not be identified. I had to start from scratch. The beauty of this situation was that I was completely unconstrained and could explore reef fish ecology in new ways. I was interested in what the fishes were doing on reefs, not how many there were of them. This laid the foundations for a broad research program that now encompasses paleontology, molecular phylogeny, functional morphology, and behavioral ecology.

I believe my work has provided a different way of approaching coral reef ecosystems. My interest in the abilities of fishes and the nature of their interaction with the reef opened up new avenues. Two examples best illustrate this: firstly, my students and I discovered that a larval fish the size of a thumbnail can swim over 100 km in a single bout and that larval anemonefishes represent the fastest swimming vertebrates. This work provided us with a profoundly different view of larval reef fishes and challenged assumptions about the processes maintaining reef fish populations. Secondly, my ongoing work on the evolution of reef fishes has emphasized the importance of history in shaping modern reefs. Analyses of fossils has identified the origins of herbivorous reef fishes shortly after the K/T boundary, while molecular phylogenies have revealed extensive speciation of reef fishes in the Miocene/Pliocene: the distant past has a lot more impact on today’s reefs than we previously thought.

There has been a wonderful transition in coral reef research from the early works in the ‘70s describing new species and quantifying demographic traits, through small-scale ecological experiments, to what is now a thoroughly comprehensive interdisciplinary field utilizing the most recent advances, ranging from ecological theory to molecular phylogenies. But what is most striking is that the research is becoming increasingly relevant outside the coral reef field. Reef research now contributes to advances in climatology, global biogeography, and ecosystem management.

Coral reef ecosystems are fast becoming the focus for issues relating to climate change and resilience-based management. The future for coral reefs is often bleak but research on coral reef ecosystems is in one of the most exciting and dynamic periods in its history. The assimilation of methodologies and the ability to apply them to a system of unprecedented scale in terms of biodiversity, geographic range, and functional complexity offers an exciting and extremely promising future. I see an increasing role for molecular techniques, large-scale studies, and functional analyses; with a critical need to understand the role of species in ecosystems, marking a shift from describing patterns to understanding mechanisms. Furthermore, I foresee better integration of ecology and sociology. Humans are drastically changing the biosphere; now more than ever we need to understand humans a part of the ecosystem in our increasingly dynamic, changing world (see review in Nature 429: 827-833, 2004).

Do not be afraid to stray from popular research areas or to use non-traditional methods and do not rely on others to identify the critical research questions for you. If you get the chance, do the research that you think is important and make your own path; if you enjoy the journey you have already succeeded.

David R. Bellwood
Professor, Marine Biology
Director, Centre for Coral Reef Biodiversity
James Cook University
Townsville, Queensland, AUSTRALIA