Partnerships for International Research and Education

The Coral Triangle is the global epicenter for marine biodiversity, yet the origins of this biodiversity remain an evolutionary and biogeographical mystery. This is largely due to our inability to understand mechanisms of allopatric speciation in the marine environment. It is also because of the lack of coordinated research efforts focused on this question across the different countries and cultures of the Coral Triangle.

The purpose of the CT-PIRE Project is to form new partnerships that can transform this epicenter of marine biodiversity into an epicenter of marine research and education. The research will focus on questions fundamental to understanding speciation in marine environments, and address the major biogeographic hypotheses for the origins of high biodiversity in this region. We will use a novel multi-disciplinary approach that combines geospatial modeling of ocean currents with comparative population genetics. Better understanding of the origins of species in the Coral Triangle will lead to a better understanding of how to safeguard this biodiversity, while the training of a new international cohort of scientists will provide the intellectual foundations for a stronger conservation movement in this region.

Spearheading the US side of the collaboration are Old Dominion University, UCLA and Duke University. Researchers from these universities will be working in partnership with top universities and scientists in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia to advance our understanding of the origins of high biodiversity within the Coral Triangle.