Dr Tom Martin

Introduction and 2024 science and research round-up

Tom is the head of research at Operation Wallacea, with an involvement with Opwalls research program stretching back nearly 20 years! Tom will introduce the first annual Optoberfest Science mini-conference, provide a summary of research achievements across our various sites over the last 12 months, and discuss key objectives for the coming year.

Dr Joe Bailey

Updates on research in Târnava Mare, Romania, including long-term stability of bird populations

Joe is a Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Conservation, and Sustainability at Anglia Ruskin University, and has been involved with the research program at our Romania site (and elsewhere) for many years. In this talk, he will provide a brief overview of recent research at our research in the Târnava Mare gion. He will put particular focus on a recently published paper “Response trait diversity and species asynchrony underlie the diversity–stability relationship in Romanian bird communities”, as well as discussing ongoing butterfly and botany research and future ambitions.

Alex O’Brien

Ecosystem shifts and lionfish: The implications of coral bleaching in Tela, Honduras

Indo-Pacific lionfish have become invasive throughout the western Atlantic, and as a result of their predatory effects are considered the most heavily impacting invasive marine vertebrate ever recorded. In the Caribbean across areas such as Utila, their populations are often managed via culling by SCUBA divers. Tela, with minimal dive tourism has provided us a unique opportunity to study lionfish in an area of high coral cover without this fishing pressure. In 2023, a mass-bleaching event occurred across Tela Bay, leading to up to 90% coral mortality. This was quickly colonised by turf algae, which has since developed into areas of dense macroaglal cover. The rapid change of the benthos will certainly have cascading effects on the entire coral reef community. This talk will outline some of the key findings from previous Opwall research conducted at Tela, and discuss the effect that this phase shift may have on the resident lionfish.

Imogen Vieten

Elephant Reintegration Trust behavioural research in Gondwana Game Reserve

The Elephant Reintegration Trust (ERT) is a South African charity which aims to develop secure wild environments to manage reintegration and rewilding of previously captive elephants, ensuring they can live out their remaining years with dignity as wild elephants. Imogen has worked with the Trust (and Opwall’s in-country partner Wildlife Ecology Investments – WEI) in several different reserves across South Africa, including the Operation Wallacea/WEI field site at Gondwana Game Reserve. In this talk, she will summarize the main objectives of the ERT field studies in both Gondwana and elsewhere, and discuss the challenges of meeting these objectives within the relatively small, fenced reserves typical of South Africa, in which various environmental factors can influence the wellbeing of elephants both positively and negatively.

Dr Merlijn Jocque

BINCO surveys in Cusuco National park and Mariarano forest – a summary of achievements to date

Merlijn in the founder and director of the Belgian-based NGO Biodiversity Inventory for Conservation (BINCO), who have been involved with ecological and taxonomic studies at our research sites for many years. BINCO focuses on biodiversity assessment and monitoring, taxonomy, open data, capacity building, and raising awareness about the critical role of biodiversity in conservation efforts. Their mission is to inspire individual action for biodiversity, unite smaller initiatives into impactful movements, and kick-start nature conservation projects. Since 2018, BINCO has had a formalized collaboration with OPWALL in Cusuco NP and Mariariano Forest, studying selected invertebrate groups. In this talk Merlijn will provide an overview of BINCOs achievements, ongoing and upcoming studies, and some reflections on biodiversity monitoring and conservation in these fascinating yet poorly-studied areas.

Professor James Bell

The rise of sponges in the Anthropocene

We have entered the Anthropocene, a geological period where human activity is the dominant influence on global climate and the environment. Coral reefs across the world have been dramatically altered in recent decades, with human activities contributing to mass coral die-offs in tropical oceans. The degradation of reef-building corals is expected to worsen under current climate trajectories, meaning future reef ecosystems are likely to be very different from those found today. Professor James Bell’s research team has proposed sponges as potential ‘winners’ on future coral reefs, as they appear to be more tolerant than corals to a range of environmental stressors. In this talk, James describes some of his teams key findings from research conducted at the Operation Wallacea sites in Indonesia and Honduras, supporting the idea that future reefs may be more dominated by sponges. The talk will discuss some of the implications of increased sponge dominance for coral reef functioning and for the 1 billion people who rely directly on coral reef resources. Finally, James will outline how future work at Operation Wallacea sites might further contribute to our understanding of how future reefs will function and the roles sponges will play in these ecosystems.

Dr Morgan Hughes

Standard deviation: studying the bats of Krka National Park

Systematic bat surveys have been ongoing in Krka National Park annually since 2021. However, capturing bats in the arid, scrub-dominated habitats of Krka using ‘traditional’ sampling techniques can be challenging. In this talk, Morgan will discuss the findings of several experimental approaches to bat mist-netting that have been explored in the Park, all of which had the goal of improving capture rates in the challenging environment Krka represents. This talk will highlight key findings from several publications stemming from our experimental work in Krka, and will outline the new, innovative methodological studies that will be conducted in the near future.

Dr Danny Haelewaters

Fungi and bat fly studies in Cusuco National Park and beyond – a summary of progress to date.

Danny is a mycologist and entomologist based at the University of Ghent. Danny’s team have been working on fungal inventory projects in Cusuco National Park since 2019. Hundreds of collections have been sampled up until the 2024 field season, resulting in the description of six new species for science, with several others in process of description. In this talk, Danny will be discussing the taxonomic and inventory work completed to date, and also give a summary of future fungi research plans. Danny will also discuss his ongoing project focusing on the ectoparasitic microfungi that are associated with flies that are bloodsucking parasites of bats. This project is run in collaboration with the respective bat teams in Cusuco National Park (since 2019), Krka National Park (since 2021), and Calakmul Biosphere Reserve (since 2024). The project aims to understand the full breadth of diversity within this multitrophic system, as well as host specificity patterns, and community ecology questions.

Dr Ian Thornhill

The freshwater invertebrate communities of Dominica

Studies of the freshwater invertebrate communities by Operation Wallacea began in 2014 and have been repeated six times since (to 2022) alongside ecosystem functioning experiments (leaf litter decomposition). This has been a rare opportunity to explore the invertebrate biodiversity of an under-sampled biodiversity hotspot, and to undertake monitoring of these environments using biological indicators based upon the invertebrate taxa. More detailed and consistent sampling from 2016, either side of Hurricane Maria in 2017, has revealed over 100 taxa with potentially new records for the island. With the help of OpWall volunteers, consistent monitoring of habitat and chemistry variables has occurred at 10 sites across four river systems and the Freshwater Lake site, as well as opportunistic sampling at a further 40+ sites. In this talk the methodological approaches will be outlined, and the composition of those communities discussed, as will the physical and chemical influences upon the macroinvertebrate assemblage.

James Muir

Monitoring the ecological impact of coral reef restoration in Akumal, Mexico

Coral reef ecosystems face a multitude of threats. Rising sea surface temperatures and increased anthropogenic disturbances have left many of the worlds reefs dead and degraded. Akumal is part of the Mesoamerican Barrier reef system, and restoration efforts have been put in place here for a number of years. In a new project in 2024, Opwall began to assess the ecological impact of these restoration efforts with an aim of starting a long term ecological monitoring programme in the area. In this talk, James will give an overview of goals for this important project.

Opwall Jobs

Interested in following in the footsteps of our speakers and working on one of our summer expeditions? Each year we have a huge number of field staff that come and join us at our projects across the globe, from lecturers to survey leaders. All of our seasonal roles are advertised on our jobs page and applications usually open in January for that year. To apply visit: jobs.opwall.com