ABOVE: Global warming could be indirectly harming kelp forests in Australia’s Great Southern Reef by altering the composition of the kelp microbiome, a study finds.
© FLICKR.COM, JOHN TURNBULL
Stretching 8,000 kilometers along the southern coast of Australia, the Great Southern Reef is an underappreciated biodiversity hotspot home to hundreds of endemic species. Here, a vast kelp forest clad in the browns, golds, and greens of its seaweed denizens dominates the rocky reef, forming a habitat for myriad fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. But one species reigns over the forest: the yellowish-brown kelp Ecklonia radiata.
“It’s massive, the spread of this single species,” says Ziggy Marzinelli, an ecologist at the University of Sydney who has been studying the kelp for more than a decade. “[E. radiata] underpins a lot of the biological diversity and ecological function in this part of Australia.”
The Great Southern Reef was named by researchers in 2015 to ...
