Rahul Mehrotra

Establishing a baseline for coral reef community structure across Thailand with a review of earlier assessments Large-scale studies examining changes in coral communities are needed to understand the impact of climate change and anthropogenic pressures on coral …

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Coast-to-coast coral assessment reveals Thailand’s reefs losing complexity Marine scientists compiling the most holistic “snapshot” of Thailand’s coral reefs to date have uncovered evidence of a long-suspected reality: Thailand’s coral reefs are losing structural complexity....

news.mongabay.com/2026/01/coas...

https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/coast-to-coast-coral-assessment-reveals-thailands-reefs-losing-complexity/

Last year, ATMEC produced one of the largest assessments of Thai coral reefs to date. A new article in Mongabay has explored the findings from our work in the context of larger issues, reinforcing the value of foundational research to conservation!

Link in the comments!

#MarineEcology 🌐🌏🪸🌊🦑

A crazy amount of heat has accumulated in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean over the past two months.

Hold on to your hats when this reaches the surface with the next El Niño.

Y-axis shows depth, X-axis shows degree longitude (one degree equals 111 km) and colors temp anomalies.

@noaa.gov PMEL data

Q&A: inbreeding and its implications for conservation - BMC Biology Inbreeding depression plays a role in the decline, endangerment, and extinction of small populations, and thus inbreeding has received much attention in conservation biology. The term inbreeding is us...

Our Q&A article on inbreeding for conservation is out in BMC Biology!

We discuss some important key concepts related to inbreeding in the light of new genomic tools and what it means for conservation when we want to improve species survival.

#consgen

bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Great stuff!

A particular concern for modern coral conservation practices!

rdcu.be/eUpi1

Last paper of the year! A new nudibranch species as a result of exploring the feeding ecology of hydroid feeding nudis in Thailand! Since I started this work almost 10 years ago, there's finally been some trickling of global nudi ecology research which is great!
Link in comments
#MarineEcology 🌐🌏🌊🦑

Shark scientists want their research to help save threatened species, but don’t know how. Our new paper can help. Sharks are some of the most threatened animals on Earth, and accordingly many scientists who study sharks want their research to be useful for conservation. However, most scientific training does n…

An all-too-common interaction I've had:

Scientist: Our research can help shape policy to protect this endangered animal.

Me: Neat! How? What policy? What is it now, and what should it be instead?

Scientist: Uhhhhh.....

Our new paper can help!

www.southernfriedscience.com/shark-scient... 🧪🦑🌍🦈

A morphological assessment of Paracyathus and Polycyathus corals (Anthozoa: Scleractinia) from the Gulf of Thailand - Marine Biodiversity Caryophylliidae is the most speciose family of Scleractinia with a wide range of ecological and morphological traits. Across previous phylogenetic studies, the Caryophylliidae have consistently been r...

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Hot off the press, our work on reviewing one of the most taxonomically complex group of scleractinian corals, based on new records from Thailand. This investigation is the precursor to a couple of rather interesting ecological findings (coming soon 😉).

rdcu.be/ePm3r

#MarineBiodiversity 🦑🌏🪸🌊

A global coral phylogeny reveals resilience and vulnerability through deep time - Nature The most recent common ancestor of the stony coral Scleractinia dates to about 460 million years ago and was probably a solitary, heterotrophic and free-living organism.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

authors.elsevier.com/a/1l-vq8MvAu...

I am pleased to announce the publication of the most extensive assessment of the coral reefs of Thailand conducted to date! This took years of work, but we are now placed for conservation action to embrace the nuances and complexity of reef ecosystems!

Link in the comments!

#MarineEcology 🌐🌏🪸🌊🦑

The ecological and evolutionary consequences of systemic racism in urban environments Cities create challenging environments for many nonhuman species, and the presence of nonhumans in cities influences the health and well-being of the humans with which they share the environment. Dist...

In a 2020 #ScienceReview, researchers investigated how systematic racist practices such as residential segregation have led to an unequal distribution of “nature” within cities.

Learn more on #WorldHabitatDay: https://scim.ag/3KQnEir

Assessing the scale and ecological impact of derelict and discarded fishing gear across Thailand via the MARsCI citizen science protocol South-East Asia is among the least studied regions for the growing issue of marine debris pollution, despite being a major contributor towards global …

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Underwater citizen science reveals the specter of ghost fishing in Thailand Marine biologists diving in the Gulf of Thailand were thrilled in 2023 to rediscover several colonies of a rare type of ocean sponge once thought to be extinct in the wild. But their excitement quickl...

As we prepare for the follow-up study on the impact of discarded fishing gear on #marinelife I wanted to throw back to this great article by @mongabay.com on our work studying this issue (link in the comments). Slowly disentangling this problem across the region🦑

news.mongabay.com/2025/01/unde...

Our next paper from this year is the first-of-its-kind for Thailand! A multidisciplinary look into the bridge between SCUBA tourism, biodiversity, economics, taxonomy and awareness. Marine biodiversity valuations can guide funding and policy!

#MarineBiodiversity 🦑🌐🌏🪸🌊

www.mdpi.com/3042-4658/2/...

Sure no worries, thanks very much!

A new scorpion species is described from Thailand's Doi Phu Kha National Park. Find out more about it here: doi.org/10.3897/zook...

#ecology #scorpions #taxonomy

In an unconscionable decision, the Smithsonian Institute has decided to no longer support the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 1 Jan 2026. Please someone step up and take it over.

Differing Competitive Hierarchies Between Scleractinian Corals on Natural Reefs and Recruits on Artificial Reefs The dominance of any organism in a given habitat depends on its competitive ability. Competition among coral genera is an important factor determining the assemblage structure within reefs and other ...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our newest paper just out: Coral recruits and juveniles on artificial substrates differ in their competitive capacity in comparison to their mature reef counterparts! We focused on a single area, so would love to see if the same trends are found elsewhere! Link in the comments!

#MarineEcology 🌐🌏🪸🌊

TTAT Progress 2024 Tao Talay Aow Thai project highlights from 2024!

We have just finished reviewing our 2024 data for Tao Talay Aow Thai, the largest sea turtle citizen science program in Thailand! Our trend of observations continued to grow, largely driven by areas with the greatest SCUBA diving activity and resident turtle populations.

tinyurl.com/y433r466

🌐🌏🐢🌊

Next stop in our coral connectivity project at ATMEC is the western Gulf of Thailand! This time, the team were able confirm a synchronized coral spawning event with more than 50 corals from 7 genera along with their dispersal patterns. Exciting updates coming soon!
🌐🌏#MarineEcology

Check out the brand new portal for the Biodiversity Literature Repository! www.biolitrepo.org, hosted by Zenodo @cern.bsky.social @plazi-species.bsky.social @gbif.org @sib.swiss

For context, the Great Barrier Reef has more than a million hectares of coral reef habitat.

Macroecological rules predict how biomass scales with species richness in nature Despite advances in theory and experiments, how biodiversity influences the structure and functioning of natural ecosystems remains debated. By applying new theory to data on 84,695 plant, animal, and...

A new study by @alexpigot.bsky.social and colleagues reveals the critical role of biodiversity in the functioning of ecosystems.
@uclcber.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Artificial Light Increases Nighttime Prevalence of Predatory Fishes, Altering Community Composition on Coral Reefs Artificial light is a manmade pollutant that is spreading into marine environments, and coral reefs are particularly susceptible to biological impacts due to the inshore, shallow, and clear-water loc...

🚨 NEW paper 🚨

🐠Coral reef nightlife becomes more predatory with light pollution💡

My first publication from my @thefsbi.bsky.social PhD at @bristolbiosci.bsky.social is out TODAY in @globalchangebio.bsky.social! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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