Carden Wallace

Carden Wallace AM
Nationality	Australian
Education	University of Queensland
Occupation	Scientist
Known for	Research on corals
Children	2

Carden Crea Wallace AM (fl. 1970–) is an Australian scientist who was the curator/director of the Museum of Tropical Queensland from 1987 to 2003. She is an expert on corals having written a "revision of the Genus Acropora". Wallace was part of a team that discovered mass spawning of coral in 1984.

Life

Carden C. Wallace graduated with a first class degree in Science from the University of Queensland in 1970.[1] She gave birth to two sons in the 1970s.[2] From 1970 to 1976, she was the curator of lower vertebrates at the Queensland Museum. She obtained her Ph.D. in 1979 at the University of Queensland.[1] Wallace spent a brief period researching at the Australian Institute of Marine Science before researching Marine Biology from 1980 as a fellow at the James Cook University of North Queensland.[1]

In 1984, Wallace and six others first reported that corals took part in mass spawning which they observed on the Great Barrier Reef in October/November.[3][4] Since they first observed reproductive synchrony in coral in Australia, it has been observed in other countries but at different times of the year.[5] As a result, the team from James Cook University were awarded the Eureka Prize for Environmental Research in 1992.[6] This example of creatures synchronising their reproduction was novel, and it was reported widely.[7]

Museum of Tropical Queensland

In 1987, the North Queensland Branch of the Queensland Museum was under the direction of 'Curator-in-Charge' Carden Wallace.[6] Whilst still at the museum, she was credited with first describing a number of corals including Acropora hoeksemai[8] and Acropora batunai in 1997.[9]

Wallace was named Director of the Museum of Tropical Queensland in 1997.[1] Its new building was opened in June 2000 by the Queensland Premier Peter Beattie.[10] In 1999, Wallace published an important work on corals titled "Staghorn Corals of the World: A Revision of the Genus Acropora". This was the first study in over a century of the genus Acropora, and it included a full description of each sub-species.[11]

Sally Lewis took over as director of the Queensland Tropical Museum in 2003.[12] In 2008, Wallace and others reported on the recovery of bio-diversity following the atomic explosion at Bikini Atoll. The team reported that there had been some recovery, but 28 types of coral were extinct.[13] In 2014, she described several new species including Acropora macrocalyx.[14] Wallace is a member of the board of OceanNEnvironment. When the Ocean Geographic Society ran a photographic competition in 2014, the award for seascapes was called the Carden Wallace Award.[15]

References

1. Smith, Alie (23 April 2003). "Wallace, Carden". Encyclopedia of Australian Science. Retrieved 12 August 2015.
2. "Judges and Awards Biography – Carden Wallace PhD". Ocean Geographic Society. Archived from the original on 16 August 2015. Retrieved 16 August 2015.
3. Harrison, P.L., Babcock, R.C., Bull, G.D., Oliver, J.K., Wallace, C.C., Willis, B.L., 1984. Mass Spawning in Tropical Reef Corals, Science 223, issue 4641, pp. 1186–1189 doi:10.1126/science.223.4641.1186
4. Babcock, R.C., Bull, G.D., Harrison, P.L., Heyward A.J., Oliver, J.K., Wallace, C.C., Willis, B.L. 1986. Synchronous spawnings of 105 scleractinian coral species on the Great Barrier Reef. Marine Biology 90, issue 3, pp. 379–394. doi:10.1007/BF00428562
5. John Edward Norwood Veron (1 January 1995). Corals in Space and Time: The Biogeography and Evolution of the Scleractinia. Cornell University Press. pp. 81–82. ISBN 0-8014-8263-1.
6. History, Museum of Tropical Queensland. Retrieved 16 August 2015
7. "Editorial Board". OGSociety. OceanNEnvironment. Retrieved 13 August 2015.
8. "Acropora hoeksemai Wallace, 1997". World Register of Marine Species. Retrieved 6 September 2015.
9. "Acropora batunai Wallace, 1997". World Register of Marine Species. Retrieved 13 August 2015.
10. Queensland Museum Annual Report 1999-2000. Retrieved 13 August 2015
11. Wallace, Carden (1999). Staghorn Corals of the World: A Revision of the Genus Acropora. Csiro Publishing. ISBN 0643102817.
12. Queensland Museum Annual Report 2002-2003. Retrieved 13 August 2015
13. Zoe T. Richards; Maria Beger; Silvia Pinca; Carden C. Wallace (2008). "Bikini Atoll coral biodiversity resilience five decades after nuclear testing" (PDF). Marine Pollution Bulletin. 56 (3): 503–515. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2007.11.018. PMID 18187160. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 13 August 2013.
14. Carden C. Wallace; Francesca R. Bosellini (2014). "Acropora (Scleractinia) from the Oligocene and Miocene of Europe: species longevity, origination and turnover following the Eocene–Oligocene transition". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 13 (6): 447–469. doi:10.1080/14772019.2014.930525. hdl:11380/1071886. S2CID 128879139.
15. Carden Wallace PhD, Ocean Geographic Society. Retrieved 13 August 2015