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Welcome to the Marine Lab

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The School of Botany Marine Lab is a teaching and research facility for the study of macroscopic algae.

Our students undertake fieldwork and courses in the unique living laboratory of the intertidal, subtidal and freshwater habitats of Westernport and Port Phillip Bay (Victoria), Tasmania, the Great Barrier Reef, Western Australia and Lord Howe Island.

As part of the Marine Lab you can choose from an exciting range of specialist research areas:

• Taxonomy

  Explore the anatomy and classification of a species, genus or even family of Australia's native marine or freshwater algae.
  Discover and name a part of Australia's unexplored biodiversity.

• Ecology and Distribution

  Study the dynamics of algal communities, their structures and species compositions, and their responses to particular environmental factors.

• Molecular Systematics

  Decipher the evolutionary relationships of taxa using the latest techniques of PCR and DNA sequencing.

• Carbohydrate Analysis

  Join the search for commercially valuable extracts from native algal species to determine their potential uses in the food-processing and pharmaceutical industries.

• Life History Studies

  Work out the often complicated life cycles of some of the most mysterious organisms of the plant kingdom.

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Members of the group | Current research | Facilities | Publications | Links

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  The University of Melbourne | Faculty of Science 

Maintainer Email Address: C.O'Brien@botany.unimelb.edu.au