The Swindlers deliver an irresistible blend of folk-rock and rhythm and blues. This six-piece Townsville band captivates audiences with powerful original songs inspired by the comedy and tragedy of life in North Queensland alongside crowd-pleasing covers from Nick Cave to T. Rex. Andrew Baird – vocals Andrew’s musical inspirations include Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison. … Continue reading The Swinders
News
New paper: “Beyond Tubipora musica: Phylogenomics unveils the overlooked diversity and endemism of the hermatypic octocoral genus Tubipora”
The octocoral genus Tubipora, commonly known as organ pipe coral, is widespread in shallow-water coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific. Ten nominal species have been described, however, most recent author recognise only one T. musica. Macrina and colleagues revisit the species richness of the genus using 136 colonies collected across six Indo-Pacific marine provinces. Morphological and phylogenomic analyses recovered at least 15 … Continue reading New paper: “Beyond Tubipora musica: Phylogenomics unveils the overlooked diversity and endemism of the hermatypic octocoral genus Tubipora”
The AU-collection of the Queensland Museum in Townsville
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 … Continue reading The AU-collection of the Queensland Museum in Townsville
Coral Taxonomy Workshop in Kenya, March 2026
Part of the mission of Project Phoenix (PP) is to give those interested in working with corals the tools to be able to identify the species they work with. Unlike my own undergraduate experience, our aim is to train participants in taxonomy rather than just specimen identification. The fact is that none of currently available … Continue reading Coral Taxonomy Workshop in Kenya, March 2026
New paper: “A nomenclature for the extant hermatypic scleractinian corals including type locations and taxonomic status for 2,338 nominal species”
Author: Andrew Baird The nomenclature recently published open-access by Crosbie et al. (2026), in the Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, provides one of the most important piece of information for testing the validity of the 2,338 current nominal species of extant hermatypic Scleractinia – the type location (for the importance of the type location, see … Continue reading New paper: “A nomenclature for the extant hermatypic scleractinian corals including type locations and taxonomic status for 2,338 nominal species”
New Paper: “Patterns of coral spawning in the Palm Islands, Great Barrier Reef”
Congratulation to Hanaka Mera and colleagues for a paper just published in Coral Reefs that should be of interest to everyone working on coral spawning on the Great Barrier Reef. The paper is published with open access and can be viewed here. The paper explored coral spawning patterns using over 30 years of direct coral … Continue reading New Paper: “Patterns of coral spawning in the Palm Islands, Great Barrier Reef”
New paper: “The tables have turned: taxonomy, systematics and biogeography of the Acropora hyacinthus (Scleractinia: Acroporidae) complex”
In 2020 when Project Phoenix launched this website, we promised a revolution and thanks to some excellent work led by Dr Sage Rassmussen, we have just delivered with a taxonomic revision of the Acropora hyacinthus species complex (Rassmussen et al. 2025). To quote the singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman and to paraphrase the title of the paper published in … Continue reading New paper: “The tables have turned: taxonomy, systematics and biogeography of the Acropora hyacinthus (Scleractinia: Acroporidae) complex”
New paper: “Identity of Montipora angulata (Lamarck, 1816) (Scleractinia, Acroporidae)”
In a new open access paper in Galaxea, Journal of Coral Reef Studies, Nomura et al. (2024) redescribe Montipora angulata (Lamarck, 1816) through reference to the type material and field specimens from Japan, and revisit the taxonomic status of morphologically similar species through comparison of the type material. Due to the poor taxonomic resolution of current molecular markers in … Continue reading New paper: “Identity of Montipora angulata (Lamarck, 1816) (Scleractinia, Acroporidae)”
Shedding light on the dark diversity of corals
A new article is available at the Lizard Island Reef Research Foundation website summarising what we found in our recent project: https://lirrf.org/shedding-light-on-the-dark-diversity-of-corals/ Related article: https://coralprojectphoenix.org/2024/06/11/taxonomy-of-the-reef-building-corals-of-lizard-island/
Taxonomy of the reef-building corals of Lizard Island
Project Phoenix has just submitted a final report for funding received from the Lizard Island Reef Research Foundation. Preliminary results of the research into the taxonomy of the reef-building corals of Lizard Island indicate that species richness in many groups of stony coral is 4-5 times higher than previously recognised, largely due to an extraordinary … Continue reading Taxonomy of the reef-building corals of Lizard Island
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