Rate My Professor Margaret Platell

Dr Margaret Platell is a Lecturer in Coastal and Marine Science in the School of Science, College of Engineering, Science and Environment at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from Murdoch University and has been an Adjunct Fellow there since 1 January 2006. Her research expertise lies in the functional ecology of fish and invertebrates in marine, estuarine, and freshwater environments, with a focus on understanding potential human impacts from activities such as fishing, fish stocking, and aquaculture. Platell has advanced knowledge of resource partitioning among demersal fishes in coastal Australian waters and produced an innovative food web for those fishes. Additional research interests include the role of saltmarshes in providing fish habitat and trophic relay from estuaries, the ecological function of coastal wetlands, fish kills, and the application of multivariate analyses, often in collaboration with leading researchers. Her specialties encompass benthic ecology, environmental impacts, estuarine, coastal and marine ecology, fish, invertebrates, multivariate statistics, and trophic interactions. Fields of research include environmental management (40%), marine and estuarine ecology including marine ichthyology (50%), and aquaculture and fisheries stock assessment (10%).

In her teaching career, Platell has coordinated and delivered first- and second-year courses in environmental and marine science and scientific practice, including the successful online course MARI1000 Our Oceans. She specializes in second- and third-year courses on fish and fisheries biology and management, estuarine ecology, and individual student research projects, using blended learning, team teaching, and mentoring. She has supervised over 15 Honours, two MSc, and two PhD students, and examined more than 40 Honours and PhD theses. Key publications include chapters 'Demystifying multivariate approaches for analysing dietary data' and 'Why and how should we study animal diets?' (both 2024, co-authored with Matthew Hayward); journal articles 'Dietary characteristics of the ecologically-important fish species Centroberyx gerrardi, including discussion of resource partitioning among species of Berycidae in Australia' (2022), 'Benthic infaunal assemblages adjacent to an ocean outfall in Australian marine waters: Impact assessment and identification of indicator taxa' (2022), 'A long-lived, estuarine-resident fish species selects its macroinvertebrate food source based on certain prey and predator traits' (2022), 'Characteristics and implications of spongivory in the Knifejaw Oplegnathus woodwardi (Waite) in temperate mesophotic waters' (2020), 'An innovative statistical approach to constructing a readily comprehensible food web for a demersal fish community' (2013), and numerous studies on dietary compositions, resource partitioning, and fish ecology from the 1990s to 2010s.