%0 Journal Article
%T She Studies Seaweed by the Seashore: The Established Researcher
%J The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America - Wiley Online Library
%D 2019
%R https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1613
%X My family holidays consisted of camping and hiking at the coast, often in the far northern region of New Zealand, where we swam, snorkeled, fished, and gathered shellfish. I learned about tides, waves, and sea conditions, and spent hours looking in tide pools and channels on rocky shores. The New Zealand Sea Shore by John Morton & Michael Miller was published in 1968, and I still remember the anticipation waiting for its release and delight in finally having a copy. This book opened my eyes to the enormous diversity of marine life, particularly algae and invertebrates, and also the wide range of habitats in NZ from protected shores to open coasts. I used to pore over this book, filled with wonderful line drawings, color plates, diagrams, photographs, intrigued by the details about species and their ecology. Later, when I was a student at the University of Auckland, I was taught by Professors Morton and Miller. John, who supervised my Stage 3 field ecology project, encouraged his students to think widely. He also emphasized the need to know the flora and fauna: As third©\year marine ecology students, we were expected to know the names of at least 150¨C300 species at the end of the 4©\day field course and more as the year progressed. Coralline algae have been a focus in my work for about 20 years. It has been an interesting path, and at the start of this work, I certainly had no idea of how complex things would becomeˇ­ I was asked to write a review paper on corallines after I presented a plenary address at the NZ Marine Sciences Society conference. I was speaking about the ubiquity of corallines in euphotic coastal zones, their vulnerability to a range of human©\mediated changes, and the gaps in our knowledge. The ecological importance of corallines was the starting point for my work, and I had hoped that once we had surveyed and properly documented the diversity and distribution of species, it would be possible to get ecological work underway. We have carried out studies on the ecology of rhodoliths in New Zealand, as well as some preliminary work on rhodoliths in mesophotic habitats. But as our work continues, it is clear that the taxonomic impediment is very significant. We have many genera and species requiring description, but still have a very poor understanding of the geographic distribution or habitats of most species. This situation is not unique to the biodiverse flora of New Zealand and is reflected across tropical and temperate regions worldwide. Fifty years ago, John Morton and Michael Miller stated ˇ°Of vast ecological importance is the family
%U https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bes2.1613