Highlights
We found that coral settler presence probability increases along a range of coral-built structural complexity
New paper led by Vivi on coral reefs
Doctor at last!! Congratulations, Garrett!
02.12.2025
23.11.2025
The new study Random encounter modelling as a viable method to estimate absolute abundance of reef fish explores a robust method for estimating reef fish abundance. Learn more here.
Cher’s last paper on reef fish abundance is now published
12.12.2025
Garrett and Maria celebrating this huge milestone together at the graduation ceremony.
The Lab hosted this month’s informal gathering at Laboratório Marítimo da Guia, where we shared updates on our main ongoing projects.
Mini do MARE @ Guia Marine Lab
Welcome to the Lab, James!
01.09.2025
03.10.2025
Field trip to Lizard Island 2025
14.10 - 19.11.2025
Field trip to Hawaii
30.07 - 21.08.2025
Welcome to the team, Nina!
What are we getting wrong about biodiversity loss? with Maria Dornelas
02.06.2025
01.06.2025
- Coral em Mudança -
Exposição no Museu do Mar
BioTIME 2.0 is finally out!
14.05.2025
08.03 - 08.06.2025
Garrett successfully passed his VIVA examination for his thesis titled The development and impacts of coral-built structure.
CONGRATS Dr. Fundakowski!
Dr Fundakowski is in the houseeeee
24.04.2025
Under Maria’s lead, the BioTIME team and more than 450 co-authors published an updated version of BioTIME, the biggest standardised biodiversity time series database available to date. Read the paper here.
Inside Biodiversity Podcast premieres with Maria Dornelas
Field trip to LIRS
21.10 - 04.12.2024
03.04.2025
Field trip to Seychelles
13.03 - 10.04.2025
Maria Dornelas is the Coordinator Lead Author for Chapter 2 of the IPBES assessment on biodiversity monitoring.
IPBES - Science and Policy for People and Nature
The team participated in and presented their work at ECRS, which focused on closing knowledge gaps between tropical, temperate, and cold-water coral reefs while advocating for sustainable conservation strategies to safeguard these ecosystems.
Team presents at European Coral Reef Symposium
02.07 - 05.07.2024
Did you know that fish are getting smaller, which could significantly impact our future? Discover the reasons behind this phenomenon and how it affects us in this revealing article.
Maria and Inês’s insights were featured in a BBC article
24.05.2024
Maria, Vivi, Ines, Faye and Anne attended the last meeting of the sTeTra working group, in Leipzig.
Last meeting of sTeTra working group
17.04 - 21.04.2024
We are recruiting a Postdoc
28.03 - 29.04.2024
Cher becomes a LIRS PhD fellow
Cher won the Ian Potter doctoral fellowship at Lizard Island. This grants her a budget to spend more time in the field in Jigurru (Great Barrier Reef, Australia).
06.02.2024
Inês Martins within the sTeTra working group leaded and published a paper on body size shifts in populations and assemblages in Science. Read the paper here.
New paper in Science
08.09.2023
Maria, Vivi, James, Cher and Garrett went to the Coconut Island field station at the Hawai’ian Institute for Marine Biology to start mapping and coral tracking on that site for the coralINT project.
Fieldtrip to Coconut Island
06.09 - 29.09.2023
Maria, Vivi, James, Garrett, Cher, Matt and Maddy, together with some HIMB collaborators Devynn, Mollie, Marion and Dama went all in for the first coralINT trip to Jiigurru
Fieldtrip to Jiigurru
17.10 - 24.11.2023
Maria, Cher, Ines and Mike join the second sTeTra working group at the idiv facilities in Leipzig. Vivi and Faye joined online. Let’s put the BioTIME database to good use!
sTeTra working group
08.05 - 12.05.2023
Welcome to our team, Emily!
01.10.2024
25.11 - 29.11.2024
‘Taking the pulse of the planet’: could we monitor biodiversity from space as we do the weather? Click here to read the article
Maria was featured in The Guardian
22.02.2024
Matthew-James Bennett joins the Macroscope as a PhD student the coralINT project. He will look at how reef community structures affect coral larval recruitment
Welcome to the Lab, Matt!
15.10.2023
As part of the NSF-NERC project ‘Flourish in complexity’ in collaboration with the J Madin lab (HIMB), Catarina, a Portuguese ceramic artist, run a clay workshop in Coconut Island (Hawai’i) with local scientists that made them relate to corals through a different perspective.
Catarina Nunes runs a ceramic workshop in Coconut Island
15.09.2023
Sofia Freitas joins the Macroscope Lab as our lab manager – good luck herding the team!
Welcome to the team, Sofia!
01.09.2023
Maria Dornelas received the first CIM Award from the University of Vigo for her pioneering contributions to the study of global marine biodiversity and the impacts of environmental changes on ocean ecosystems.
Maria honoured with first CIM Award
24.10.2024
Awarded with an ERC Consolidator grant, Maria starts her project coralINT. She brings Viviana in the team as a postdoc and starts this adventure based at the Guia Marine lab, a MARE FCUL facility.
coralINT starts!
01.11.2022
Maria attended the first sTime working group meeting, focused on merging palaeo and modern data to look at biodiversity change.
sTime working group
10.04 - 14.04.2024