Published work

Environmental compliance monitoring associated with the Port Miami dredging project (2013–2015) captured a thermal bleaching event and the first reports of the disease, now termed stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) in Fall 2014. Over the 2-year monitoring period, 26.3% of the monitored corals died. We found that coral mortality was strongly impacted by disease and the emergence of SCTLD during the monitoring period, which impacted coral species differently depending on their susceptibility to SCTLD. Thus, while local events such as a dredging project do have quantifiable effects and can be harmful to corals, regional and global threats that result in mass coral mortality such as thermal stress and disease represent an existential threat to coral reefs.

Exaiptasia anemones are model systems to study the anthozoan (coral) – algal symbioses. In this paper, we made aposymbiotic (algae-free) anemones by treating them with menthol and used RNA sequencing to compared gene expression response of aposymbiotic vs symbiotic anemones exposed to the coral pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus. To our surprise, the pathogen and symbiotic state responses were mostly independent.

The second of two papers where manipulating quorum sensing in disease transmission experiments. In this paper, we arrest transmission of White Band Disease to staghorn corals by applying a bacterial quorum sensing inhibitor. Previously, we showed that your could turn on bacterial virulence in healthy coral microbiomes by apply quorum sensing auto-inducers.