The University of Western Australia

Dr Bob Black

Honorary Research Fellow
School of Animal Biology

Contact details

Address

School of Animal Biology
The University of Western Australia (M092)
35 Stirling Highway
CRAWLEY WA 6009
Australia

Phone

6488 2232 / 6488 1473

Fax

6488 1029

Email

robert.black@uwa.edu.au

Qualifications

BA Sask., MSc Br.Col., PhD Calif.

Biography

I am broadly interested in ecology. With my students and my colleagues, I have been involved in research in marine biology at Ningaloo Reef, at Princess Royal Harbour and at Rottnest Island.

In my research, I study population ecology of marine invertebrates. I use studies of demography of populations and experimental investigations of competition and predation within communities to determine the mechanisms underlying patterns of distribution and abundance of shallow-water marine invertebrates. My students and I have worked recently at rocky intertidal, sandy and mangrove shores and the shallow subtidal. I have investigated limpets, littorines and other grazing gastropods, predatory whelks, suspension-feeding bivalves, urchins, fishes and coral. I am particularly interested in population dynamics and the role of recruitment, in competitive interactions, in the functional significance of plastic morphological characteristics and in trade-offs in life history characteristics.

Key research

Ecology, Marine Ecology, Life-history, Plasticity, Population models

Publications

Recent publications

Johnson, M.S., and Black, R. 2008. Adaptive responses of independent traits to the same environmental gradient in the intertidal snail Bembicium vittatum. Heredity 101: 83-91.

Johnson, M.S., and Black, R. 2008. Effects of contrasting tidal habitats on growth, survivorship and dispersal in an intertidal snail. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 363: 96-103.

Johnson, M.S., and Black, R. 2006. Effects of mode of reproduction on genetic divergence over large spatial and temporal scales in intertidal snails of the genus Bembicium Philippi (Gastropoda: Littorinidae). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 89: 689-704.

Johnson, M.S., and Black, R. 2006. Islands increase genetic subdivision and disrupt patterns of connectivity of intertidal snails in a complex archipelago. Evolution 60: 2498-2506.

Johnson, M.S., & Black, R. 2005. Effects of a larval stage on isolation of populations of the trochid Austrocochlea constricta in tidal ponds. Marine Biology 147: 189-195.

Black, R., & Johnson, M.S. 2001. Contrasting life histories and demographies of eight species of littorines at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. Journal of Shellfish Research 20, 393-402.

Pudovskis, M.S., Johnson, M.S. & Black, R. 2001. Genetic divergence of peripherally disjunct poplations of the gastropod Batillariella estuarina in the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, Western Australia. Molecular Ecology 10, 2605-2616.

Yeap, K.L., Black, R., & Johnson, M.S. 2001. Developmental constraints and adaptive phenotypic plasticity in the intertidal snail Nodilittorina australis . Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 72, 63-76.

Memberships

Ecological Society of America
Royal Society of Western Australia
Sigma Xi

Research profile

Research profile and publications