As concern over the effects of anthropogenically-induced global warming on the marine biosphere increases (IPCC, 2001; Gardner et al., 2003; Hughes et al., 2003), paleoecological studies of the response of marine systems to climate change have become increasingly relevant. Modern and Pleistocene coral reef communities present in coastal Western Australia provide a natural laboratory in which to investigate the influence of climatically driven changes in the veracity of the Leeuwin Current on the geographic distribution of reef coral communities.

Beginning in 2003, and in collaboration with Dr. John Pandolfi (Centre for Marine Studies, University of Queensland), I engaged a comparative study between Pleistocene reef coral communities from the Last Interglacial (approximately 125 ka; Sangamon, oxygen isotope substage 5e, Harrison and Coniglio, 1985) preserved along a 12 degree latitudinal gradient exposed on the coast of Western Australia, and the modern reef corals in that region. Five Pleistocene/modern reef "pairs" exposed at separate localities have been selected for study in the "Western Overlap Zone" between the Damperian Province of the Northern Australian tropical region and the Flindersian Province of the Southern Australian temperate region (Wilson and Gillett, 1980). With funding obtained from the Petroleum Research Fund (American Chemical Society) I have thus far collected relative abundance data from the fossil reef coral assemblages exposed at the fossil localities, and assembled an extensive collection of fossil reef corals from the study area. The collection is housed at the University of Queensland. I have begun a comparison of the data with that published for the modern reefs offshore of each locality. Preliminary results reveal that reef corals expanded their latitudinal ranges during Pleistocene time (Greenstein and Pandoli, 2004; 2006).

This work has also provided the first studies of coral preservation in Western Australia (Andresen and Greenstein, 2006), paleoecological studies of coralline algae (Clayton and Greenstein, 2005) and comparative studies of modern and Pleistocene reefal sediments (Waite and Greenstein, 2005).