Dr David Lane

Dr David Lane

Editor-in-Chief: Dr. David Lane

Following a degree in Zoology at the University of London, David JW Lane has both specialized and diversified his research interests in biology. His major area of postgraduate and postdoctoral research activities began in marine science at what is now the School of Ocean Science of the University of North Wales. His main research activities in the U.K. concerned ultrastructural studies of the settlement stages of marine invertebrate larvae. An important discovery was the characterization of the routine mucous thread-drifting capability of already-settled post-larval mussels which are consequently able to drift again in the water column, much like baby spiders do in air. Subsequently his interests shifted towards the use and development of techniques for energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis as applied to biological tissue. One key finding was the localization and quantification of very high levels of the element vanadium in some ascidian blood cells and its potential role.

In the mid 1980s he relocated to equatorial Southeast Asia – initially The National University of Singapore, then, at the turn of the millennium, to Universiti Brunei Darussalm – where, apart from electron microscopy, he focused principally on tropical marine biology and ecology, in particular, biodiversity studies of Echinodermata (sea stars and their relatives); he has published extensively in this field. One of his current major research initiatives is on patterns of sea star diversity in and around the region of maximum marine biodiversity known as the Coral Triangle. In a quite different research area, he has a collaborative research agenda on Chiroptera (bats) a group of mammals that are highly diverse yet still under-researched in Southeast Asia. One of the key (and in fact alarming) publications arising from this research was a prediction of high bat extinction rates given the high rates of forest loss in Southeast Asia.

Dr. Lane has also developed a research and teaching profile in coral reef science and been an active member of the International Society for Reef Studies since 1986. He been a member of many marine Expeditions in the Indo-Pacific region and in 1997 assisted in coordinating an international South China Sea Biodiversity workshop (Echinoderm component). In 2007 he chaired an International Conference on “ Tropical Islands Biodiversity Crisis: The Indo-West Pacific” and edited the resulting book published by Springer in 2010. He has served on editorial review panels for several international journals.