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News 2022
Coral reef sea creature named after School of BEES professor
The crown-of-thorns sea star native to the Red Sea has been given the name 'Acanthaster benziei' in honour of Professor John Benzie, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES), UCC.
In addition to climate change, coral-eating crown-of-thorns sea stars pose one of the biggest threats to coral reefs in parts of the Indo-Pacific region. These creatures feed mainly on the polyps of fast-growing stony corals. A team led by reseachers in Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich has now demonstrated with the aid of morphological investigations and genetic analyses that the crown-of-thorns sea star native to the Red Sea form a distinct species, which has been given the name 'Acanthaster benziei' in honour of Professor John Benzie.
Professor Benzie has conducted pioneering work with his groundbreaking genetic studies on crown-of-thorns sea stars in the 1990s and his comprehensive collection. He has more than 25 years of research experience in government, university, and private sectors worldwide, applying genetics to natural resource management and aquaculture. He heads the genetics group at Worldfish, based in Penang Malaysia, coordinating international programs of research in genetic improvement of fish in Egypt, sub-Saharan Africa, south and south-east Asia. He is currently Professor of Marine Molecular Biodiversity at UCC, and an Editor of the journal Aquaculture.
Congratulations to Professor Benzie on this honour. Read more