Abstract: Earth´s climate has changed cyclically throughout history. What is stark and unequivocal is that since the industrial revolution, human activities have irreversibly altered the Earth´s climate, with atmospheric carbon dioxide currently rising 100 times faster than prior to the last ice age. These impacts are expected to irreversibly alter marine habitats by the end of the century, through changes such as ocean warming and acidification. However, potententially even more pressing are the disturbances that marine organisms are already facing today, including acute heat waves, extreme weather events, and habitat degradation. In this talk, I will discuss my research into the effects of both projected future climate change and current day pressures on coral reef fishes, and how these impacts are already affecting fish behaviour and physiology at concerning rates. This work is especially timely given the rapid decline of tropical coral reefs worldwide, with summer heatwaves causing mass coral bleaching events in three of just the last five years. Survival and fitness of coral reef fishes will ultimately be deteremined by fishes´ capacity to compensate for these impacts in both the short (days, weeks, months) and long (years, decades, centuries) term

Biography: Dr. Lauren Nadler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences at Nova Southeastern University, in Dania Beach, Florida (USA). Prior to moving back to the US in July 2020, Lauren completed her PhD at James Cook University (2013-2016) followed by a postdoctoral fellowship split between Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (2016-2020). Since last summer, she has been working on building the Marine Behaviour and Physiology Lab at NSU, focused on better understanding why animals behave the way that they do and what physiological traits drive these observed behaviours. This research program focuses primarily on social fishes, examining how group composition, environment, and parasites shape social behaviour in coral reef and estuarine species.