Terence P. Hughes (born 1956, in

Dublin, Ireland Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 cen ...

) is a professor of

marine biology Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies s ...

James Cook University James Cook University (JCU) is a public university in North Queensland, Australia. The second oldest university in Queensland, JCU is a teaching and research institution. The university's main campuses are located in the tropical cities of Cairn ...

in Queensland, Australia. He is known for research on the global

coral bleaching Coral bleaching is the process when corals become white due to various stressors, such as changes in temperature, light, or nutrients. Bleaching occurs when coral polyps expel the zooxanthellae (dinoflagellates that are commonly referred to as alg ...

event caused by

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

. ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'' dubbed him "Reef sentinel" in 2016 for the global role he plays in applying multi-disciplinary science to securing reef sustainability. He is an

Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow The Australian Laureate Fellowship is an Australian professorial research fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council. Up to 17 fellows are chosen each year for five-year awards. Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Georgina Sweet fellowships In 201 ...

and Director of the

Australian Research Council The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than in grants each year. The Council was established by the ''Australian Research Council Act 2001'', ...

(ARC) Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. His research interests encompass coral reef ecology, macroecology and

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

, as well as social-ecological interactions. His recent work has focused on marine ecology, macroecology, climate change, identifying safe planetary boundaries for human development, and on transformative governance of the sea in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, the Galapagos Islands,

Gulf of Maine The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of North America. It is bounded by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and by Cape Sable Island at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northeast ...

and the Coral Triangle. His career citations in Google Scholar exceed 88,000.

Education and career

Hughes was awarded a PhD in

Ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

and

Evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

Baltimore, USA Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was d ...

, in 1984, for his research on

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and sec ...

life histories, phase-shifts and the resilience of

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

coral reefs. Following his PhD, he was an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

, Santa Barbara (1984-1990) before moving to

Townsville, Australia Townsville is a city on the north-eastern coast of Queensland, Australia. With a population of 180,820 as of June 2018, it is the largest settlement in North Queensland; it is unofficially considered its capital. Estimated resident population, 30 ...

. He was appointed Professor in 2000 and established the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in 2005. Hughes has published in excess of 180 peer reviewed publications, so far. The ARC Centre produces greater than 350 publications annually and was recently awarded further funding until 2021.

Awards

In 2001, Hughes was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science for his contribution to

coral reef A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. Co ...

science. He has been awarded the

Centenary Medal The Centenary Medal is an award which was created by the Australian Government in 2001. It was established to commemorate the centenary of the Federation of Australia and to recognise "people who made a contribution to Australian society or go ...

of Australia for his services to Australian society and marine biology, a Silver Jubilee Award for Excellence by the Australian Marine Science Association, the Australian Museum Eureka Sherman Prize for Environmental Science, a 2012

Australian Laureate Fellowship The Australian Laureate Fellowship is an Australian professorial research fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council. Up to 17 fellows are chosen each year for five-year awards. Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Georgina Sweet fellowships In 201 ...

, and the Darwin Medal by the International Society for Reef Studies. In 2014, he was awarded an Einstein Professorship by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Hughes was joint winner of the 2018 John Maddox Prize, awarded by ''

'' and Sense about Science. In 2018, Hughes was also awarded the

A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in the Marine Sciences The A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in the Marine Sciences was established in 1980 by the Canadian marine science community to recognize excellence of research and outstanding contributions to marine sciences. It is presented by the Royal Societ ...

and the Climate Change Award from th
Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation
In 2019, Trinity College Dublin awarded him with an honorary doctorate. He and

Catherine Lovelock Catherine Ellen Lovelock (born 1964) is an Australian marine ecologist, whose research focuses on coastal ecosystems. She is a professor in the School of Biological Science at the University of Queensland and 2020 Georgina Sweet Australian Laur ...

were jointly awarded the Suzanne Cory Medal by the Australian Academy of Science in March 2023.

Selected bibliography

* Catastrophes, phase-shifts, and large-scale degradation of a Caribbean coral reef. Hughes, T.P., Science (1994) 265:1547-1551. * Climate change, human impacts, and the resilience of coral reefs. Hughes, T.P., A.H. Baird, D.R. Bellwood, ''et al.'', Science (2003) 301:929-933. * Confronting the coral reef crisis. Bellwood, D.R., T.P. Hughes, C. Folke, and M. Nyström, Nature (2004) 429:827-833. * New paradigms for supporting the resilience of marine ecosystems. Hughes, T.P., D.R. Bellwood, C. Folke, ''et al.'', Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2005) 20:380-386. * Regime-shifts, herbivory and the resilience of coral reefs to climate change. Hughes, T.P., M.J. Rodrigues, D.R. Bellwood, ''et al.'', Current Biology (2007) 17:360-365. * Rising to the challenge of sustaining coral reef resilience. Hughes, T.P., N. Graham, J.B.C. Jackson, ''et al.'', Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2010) 25:633-642. * Living dangerously on borrowed time during unrecognized regime shifts. Hughes, T.P., C. Linares, V. Dakos, ''et al.'', Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2012) 28:149-155. *Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals. Hughes, T.P., and 43 co-authors. ''Nature'' (2017) 543: 373–377. *Global warming transforms coral reef ecosystems. Hughes, T.P. and 14 co-authors. ''Nature'' (2017) 556: 492 – 496. *Spatial and temporal patterns of mass bleaching of corals in the Anthropocene. Hughes T.P., and 24 co-authors. ''Science'' (2018) 359: 80 – 83. *Ecological memory modifies the cumulative impact of recurrent climate extremes. Hughes TP, and 12 co-authors. ''Nature Climate Change'' (2019) 9: 40–43. *Global warming impairs stock-recruitment dynamics of corals. Hughes T.P., and 17 co-authors. (2019). ''Nature'' 568, 387–390.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes, Terry Living people 1956 births Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science Irish biologists Academic staff of James Cook University John Maddox Prize recipients