The Centre's Aquatic Biodiversity Research and Monitoring Group provides knowledge and advice for the management of aquatic biodiversity in rural, urban and pristine catchments.

Conservation, research, monitoring and management

The group focuses on research and monitoring of aquatic macro-invertebrate communities and can provide advice on:

• aquatic resources in rural and urban landscapes
• impact assessments of variable land uses, ecosystem rehabilitation
• management of threatening processes such as salinity
• threatened species and communities

The group has a comprehensive range of field and laboratory equipment as well as an extensive collection of species identification guides. We have a fully equipped laboratory with facilities for processing samples, microscopy and microphotography, and an extensive reference collection of voucher specimens and photographic records of south-western Australian macro-invertebrate fauna.

Our field equipment includes research vessels, a wide range of netting, trapping and sorting equipment for sampling macro-invertebrates in a range of habitats, and multi-parameter water quality analysers.

Expertise and resources

The group has specific expertise and resources in:

• sampling and identifying aquatic invertebrate fauna
• monitoring water quality
• designing monitoring programs and sampling regimes
• riparian and in-stream habitat assessment
• taxonomy and systematics of aquatic invertebrates
• biology of selected species
• population and community ecology
• GIS and mapping capabilities
• conservation genetics of aquatic invertebrates

For further information on this research please contact Dr Barbara Cook.