Morane Le Nohaic

Morane is a PhD student at the School of Biological Sciences, at the Marine Spatial Ecology Lab (MSEL), starting in July 2020. She works under the supervision of Professor Peter Mumby and in collaboration with Dr Selina Ward (UQ) and Dr Christopher Doropoulos (CSIRO). Her PhD research focuses on spatiotemporal variation of coral reproductive investment under environmental constraints and its implications for coral larval connectivity in present and future climatic contexts. 

Morane’s interest in marine ecology began when she volunteered in a Sea Turtle Conservation Centre in French Polynesia during her high school years. She graduated in 2014 from a Bachelor degree in Biology at Rennes 1 University (France), followed by an Environmental Management and Coastal Ecology Master degree at La Rochelle University (France) during which she helped establish baseline surveys of green turtle foraging grounds in a Cameroonian National Marine Park.

With a growing interest in coral reef ecology, she moved to Perth in 2016. Here she studied the impacts of the 2015–16 El-Niño induced heatwave on Western Australia inshore reefs for her Masters thesis, with a focus on the naturally heat-resistant coral communities of the Kimberley region, under the supervision of Dr Verena Schoepf and Professor Malcolm McCulloch at the University of Western Australia. She then continued her studies (short-term courses in laboratory techniques, sustainability and land management) to explore different science career opportunities. After various coastal ecology volunteering and research assistant experiences, she joined the Marine Spatial Ecology Lab at The University of Queensland to start her PhD with Professor Peter Mumby. 

Publication

Le Nohaïc, M., Ross, C. L., Cornwall, C. E., Comeau, S., Lowe, R., McCulloch, M. T., & Schoepf, V. (2017). Marine heatwave causes unprecedented regional mass bleaching of thermally resistant corals in northwestern Australia. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 1–11.