Geomorphic Features and Infauna Diversity of a Subtropical Mid-Ocean Carbonate Shelf

High coral cover on a mesophotic, subtropical island platform at the limits of coral reef growth

“…The occurrence of modern coral growth on fossil reef structures at Balls Pyramid highlights the role of antecedent topography in providing substrate for coral colonisation. influencing benthic community distribution supports previous studies which have linked geomorphology to infaunal (Brooke et al, 2012;Anderson et al, 2013) and epifaunal (Przeslawski et al, 2011) assemblages on the Lord Howe Island shelf and Lord Howe Rise.…”

Development of a Seamless, High-Resolution Bathymetric Model to Compare Reef Morphology around the Subtropical Island Shelves of Lord Howe Island and Balls Pyramid, Southwest Pacific Ocean

“…Previous studies of the distribution of benthic assemblages around the island shelves and broader Lord Howe region have shown strong correlations to geomorphic features and shelf regions [31,32,37,[55][56][57]. Abundant hard corals were recently discovered growing on the mid-shelf reef of Balls Pyramid, showing increased abundance associated with the mid-and outer-shelf reef features [37].…”

“…Meso-scale mapping at the geomorphic and primary biome classification levels have also been produced for the shelves [30,[32][33][34][35] and habitat classifications have been performed for shallow and mesophotic assemblages [23,34,36,37]. Mapping of geomorphic features has been utilised in assessment reviews of the marine park zoning scheme and research planning [34,38].…”