Internship with Queensland Museum Tropics

Bella, from USA, is studying a Bachelor or Marine Biology with James Cook University @jamescookuniversity in Townsville. Bella has been a Student Ambassador with Study Townsville in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and recently undertook an internship with Queensland Museum Tropics and shared her experience with us.

So excited I am finally able to share this amazing internship opportunity! For the past couple of months I have been interning at the Queensland Museum Tropics @qmtropics alongside Dr. Tom Bridge, Senior Scientist and Coral Collector at QMT, to resolve the taxonomic biodiversity of corals on the Ningaloo Reef and throughout Western Australia. Throughout this internship placement I was able to gain a greater understanding of the history of coral taxonomic research and learn the intricacies of coral reef research from the best in the business.

The past couple months I have been assembling an updated nomenclature for Western Australian corals using original descriptions and holotype specimens, many of which were written over a century ago and in French, Latin, and German. After translating these descriptions into English and locating photographs, where available, I began to assign topotype specimens (specimen from the same location as the original type specimen). Tom and a number of colleagues have collected numerous coral samples during their expeditions to the Ningaloo Reef, Exmouth, and the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, providing me with a folder of in-situ and skeletal images that I used to designate topotypes. With tissue samples from these collected specimens, they reconstructed a phylogenetic tree covering all the known genera from Ningaloo. By analysing these phylogenetic trees I was able to assess the divergence of coral species on the Ningaloo Reef compared to those on the Great Barrier Reef. We know that there is still undocumented and cryptic species that require further investigation, and far greater diversity that ever thought before.

Despite our progress, there is still a vast and poorly understood diversity of West Australian corals, meaning more taxonomic research is still needed!

This is internship has been the most amazing experience to learn about coral taxonomy and the morphological features used to delineate corals.

I want to give a huge shout out to Dr. Tom Bridge and the QMT who made this internship possible. What an amazing way to end my Undergraduate degree in Marine Biology than learning corals from the best! This is your sign to connect with @study.townsville and their Student Ambassador Program!

November 2024

Photo Credit: Bella Fina