Centre for Fish, Fisheries and Aquatic Ecosystems - inner header

Biological and evolutionary processes

The assessment of the status of biological populations and their responses to environmental variability and their resilience to fishing requires rigorous, quantitative data and robust estimates of fundamental biological processes such as growth, mortality, reproduction and feeding. These studies also provide the fundemental information required by ecosystem models and can be included in population evaluation tools, which take into account the influence of environmental change and anthropogenic impacts, such as fishing and climate change, on the changing status of populations.

Research on taxonomy and genetics facilitates species identification and an understanding of the connectivity between populations and the evolution of species. The facilities at the State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre and Bio-informatics Research Centre at Murdoch University also provide a state of the art approach for a full range of different applications, such as discriminating different fish stocks, determining evolutionary rates, identifying dietary components and determining the structure of food webs.

For further information see associated web sites that are listed on our Links page.