MACNA 2011 Presenter Profile: Charlie Veron
Charlie Veron is best known as the author of the three volume
Corals of the World. He is also the senior author of the major electronic products
Coral ID and
Coral Geographic.
Veron is the author of 100 scientific articles, including 14 books and monographs, on subjects ranging from climate change, molecular biology, palaeontology, coral identification, biogeography, coral reefs, conservation, marine science policy, marine science history, cell biology, reptilian physiology and biography.
He is former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
He has been the recipient of the Darwin Medal, the Silver Jubilee Pin of the Australian Marine Sciences Association, the Australasian Science Prize, the Whitley Medal and received special mention in the Eureka Awards.
He has discovered and described 20% of all coral species of the world. He has worked in all the major coral reef regions of the world, participating in 66 expeditions and spending 7,000 hours scuba diving.
He continues to work in many different fields although he now concentrates on conservation and the effects of climate change on coral reefs.
Topic Presentation: Corals: what’s in a name?
Speaker room - Saturday, September 10 12:00 PM
Coral taxonomy is moving on. When I started working on corals, identifying them to species (or rather supposed species) was a complex affair requiring a detailed knowledge of skeletal structures and dozens of volumes of complex monographs. That was how it was before the age of scuba diving. The reality of the reef changed that completely because living corals could be studied in detail in all the environments in which they occurred and in all parts of the world. This revealed huge variation in species, both environmental and geographic. It also allowed the majority of species to be identified from photos. Today, with information technology, coral identification has taken another leap. We are now interfacing taxonomy with the genetic basis of species as well as their reproductive mechanisms. This has led to a re-think of the evolutionary process which underpins it all. This presentation will trace this history, then go on to issues revealed by aquarists and what aquarium studies can potentially contribute to our accumulating knowledge of these fascinating animals.