Joshua Madin, Maria Dornelas and Elizabeth Madin have been awarded $390,000 from the Australian Research Council Discovery Project scheme for their project “Why are complex habitats more diverse?”
The project aims to develop and test theory for the ubiquitous relationship between habitat complexity and biodiversity. Whether in forests, grasslands, kelp forests or coral reefs, habitat complexity is increasingly being flattened by natural and human-based processes. The group will integrate 3D habitat models with established ecological theory, and then validate the theory on coral reefs that have undergone disturbances with different effects on complexity (cyclones and bleaching).