Population Genomics • Bioinformatics • Data Science
Section under construction....
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Climate Change BiologyLife in our oceans is currently facing an assortment of anthrogenic stressors, taking place at an unprecedented rate. Increasing temperatures, nutrient availability, and carbon dioxide stress are all rapidly influencing the biology of marine systems. It is important that the scientific community comes together to assess how and where these changes manifest, what organisms can and will be affected, as well as the scope of the impact. I strive to contribute to the physiological ecology aspects of these questions and investigate how organisms respond in order to survive in their dynamic environments. I will be focusing on acidification/temperature multistressor physiology in calcifying non-coral invertebrates.
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Evolutionary and Physiological Responses to Change
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Distilled down, organisms have four basic responses to a changing environment: Migration, acclimation, adaptation, or extinction. Migration can be an effective strategy when moving to a more favorable microclimate is possible. For many sessile organisms this takes considerable time, over the course of generations. Acclimatization, or the ability to gradually maintain a tolerance to change is another strategy to respond to a changing environment. However, this ability is not equal among all species and some have much more narrow tolerance levels and individual ability to cope with changes. The third response, adaptation, is what I am extremely excited about investigating. The ability for an organism to adapt and actually alter their physiological machinery (via genetic changes) may take longer than acclimation, but the potential benefits are optimistic. I plan to study the potential for localized adaptation to stressors by looking at how different populations that have undergone a gradient of stressful conditions have adapted to survive. Furthermore, I will be assessing the potential for transgenerational adaptation and how progeny of "adapted" populations compare physiologically to populations in more laxed conditions.
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Previous Projects and Contributions
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