Author: Andrew Baird

The AU-collection of the Queensland Museum in Townsville consists of 864 hard corals specimens, with accompanying field images and tissue, collected by Dr Francesca Benzoni over the course of five major expeditions to the east-coast of Australia and the Coral Sea, funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and Parks Australia. The expeditions included trips to the Solitary Islands and Lord Howe Island in December 2014, Lord Howe Island in March 2018, the Coral Sea in December 2018 and the legendary “Voyage of the Kalinda” in November 2019.

Dr Francesca Benzoni is the premier coral taxonomist of her generation. Francesca was trained in traditional taxonomy during her PhD at CRIOBE in Perpignan, France. She soon expanded her skills to include the use of molecular techniques and has since pioneered the use of an integrated approach to coral taxonomy. Francesca has also been an important mentor to the next generation of coral taxonomists and several of the leading lights in coral taxonomy have emerged from her lab, including Dr Roberto Arrigoni, Dr Tullia Terraneo and Dr Nicolas Oury. Francesca has named at least 16 new species and reclassified or resurrected many more.

Numerous publications have used specimens from the AU-collection, including taxonomic revisions of Lobophylliidae (Arrigoni et al. 2016a & b), Plesiastreidae (Juszkiewicz et al. 2022), Lepastrea (Arrigoni et al. 2020), Poritidae (Terraneo et al. 2025) and Tubipora (Macrina et al. in press).

The collection continues to provide material for novel species descriptions (Baird et al. in prep) and revisions of various taxa, such as the of Acropora from eastern Australia (Crosbie et al. in review).

For more information or access to the collection, please contact the Collections Manager at QMT Dr Stefano Borghi.

References

Arrigoni R, Benzoni F, Huang DW, Fukami H, Chen CA, Berumen ML, Hoogenboom M, Thomson DP, Hoeksema BW, Budd AF, Zayasu Y, Terraneo TI, Kitano YF, Baird AH (2016a) When forms meet genes: revision of the scleractinian genera Micromussa and Homophyllia (Lobophylliidae) with a description of two new species and one new genus. Contrib Zool 85:387-422

Arrigoni R, Berumen ML, Chen CA, Terraneo TI, Baird AH, Payri C, Benzoni F (2016b) Species delimitation in the reef coral genera Echinophyllia and Oxypora (Scleractinia, Lobophylliidae) with a description of two new species. Mol Phylogen Evol 105:146-159

Arrigoni R, Berumen ML, Mariappan KG, Beck PSA, Hulver AM, Montano S, Pichon M, Strona G, Terraneo TI, Benzoni F (2020) Towards a rigorous species delimitation framework for scleractinian corals based on RAD sequencing: the case study of Leptastrea from the Indo-Pacific. Coral Reefs 39:1001-1025

Juszkiewicz DJ, White NE, Stolarski J, Benzoni F, Arrigoni R, Hoeksema BW, Wilson NG, Bunce M, Richards ZT (2022) Phylogeography of recent Plesiastrea (Scleractinia: Plesiastreidae) based on an integrated taxonomic approach. Mol Phylogen Evol 172:107469

Rassmussen SH, Cowman PF, Baird AH, Crosbie AJ, Quattrini AM, Bonito V, Sinniger F, Harii S, Cabaitan PC, Fadli N, Tan C-H, Hung JY-H, Rongo T, Huang D, Halafihi T, Bridge TCL (2025) The tables have turned: taxonomy, systematics and biogeography of the Acropora hyacinthus (Scleractinia: Acroporidae) complex. Invertebr Syst 39:IS24049

Terraneo TI, Benzoni F, Arrigoni R, Berumen ML, Mariappan KG, Antony CP, Harrison HB, Payri C, Huang D, Baird AH (2025) A genomic approach to Porites (Anthozoa: Scleractinia) megadiversity from the Indo-Pacific. Mol Phylogen Evol 203:108238