ProfessorMaria Byrne

Dr Maria Byrne is Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Sydney. Her research on the impacts of environmental stressors on marine species with a focus on the impacts of climate change across latitudes is generating crucial findings on species' vulnerabilities and resilience for management and conservation.The overarching goal is to determine the ecologically and economically important species that may be resilient to changing climate.Her research on the complex interactions between stressors across life stages and species groupsis influential. Recent research on the impacts of marine heatwaves shows that warming is the contemporary stressor of greatest concern, including work with the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce and investigation of species' poleward range extension.Prof Byrne is world expert on echinoderms(sea urchins, the crown of thorns starfish, beche de mer sea cucumbers) and her research on these species is providing key findings to address the challenge for their management. In long standing research her work on closely related species with contrasting modes of development is providing break throughs on the molecular mechanisms underlying developmental change, generation of evolutionary novelty and speciation in the sea.