Rate My Professor Alistair Poore

Professor Alistair Poore is Head of the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences in the Faculty of Science at the University of New South Wales, a position he has held since 2018. He joined UNSW in 2001 following postdoctoral work at Lund University in Sweden (1999-2000) and earned his PhD from UNSW in 1999 on the ecology and evolution of host plant use in herbivorous marine amphipods, and BSc (Hons) from Monash University in 1992. Poore's research expertise lies in ecology and evolutionary biology of coastal marine ecosystems, encompassing the impacts of herbivores on algal and seagrass communities, evolution of host choice in marine herbivores such as amphipods, responses of marine organisms to human impacts including urbanisation, ocean warming and acidification, adaptation to environmental stress, trophic interactions, habitat restoration, and leveraging citizen science for monitoring biodiversity and reef health. He contributes to the Centre for Marine Science and Innovation and the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre.

Recognised for excellence in research and teaching, Poore was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 2020, received the UNSW Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2012, a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning from the Office for Learning and Teaching in 2013, and the Provasoli Award in 2014 for the best paper in the Journal of Phycology. Key publications include 'Global patterns in the impact of marine herbivores on benthic primary producers' (Ecology Letters, 2012), 'Plant feeding promotes diversification in the Crustacea' (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017), 'Optimizing the restoration of the threatened seagrass Posidonia australis: plant traits influence restoration success' (Restoration Ecology, 2023), and 'Seagrass Tolerance to Simulated Herbivory Along a Latitudinal Gradient: Predicting the Potential Effects of Tropicalisation' (Ecology and Evolution, 2024). His work, cited over 8,000 times, has advanced global understanding of marine herbivory, diversification, and restoration strategies.