Past Research
Some of my research interests are oriented toward ecological patterns and processes at the population and the community level. Mainly, I have been working on stony corals as a model system to investigate how marine community are organized and change at various temporal and spatial scales. Some projects are detailed below.
Spatio-temporal patterns of coral recruitment, Zonation of benthic invertebrates within atoll lagoons
I worked on these subjects as an intern at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Universite de Perpignan, in France, under the supervision of Dr. Mehdi Adjeroud. The first subject is part of a larger research agenda developed by Dr. Adjeroud. This latter focuses on the role of reproductive strategies, dispersal and recruitment patterns in structuring and maintaining coral communities. Our study on the zonation of benthic invertebrates within atoll lagoons is part of the larger TYPATOLL research program (IRD), focusing on the structure and functioning of French Polynesian atoll lagoons. Our paper emphasizes the biological uniqueness of lagoons in French Polynesia.
Short term decline of a Bahamian patch reef
This project was the focus of my Masters thesis at the College of Charleston, under the guidance of Dr. Phillip Dustan. Our study site, Rainbow Gardens, lost ~80% coral cover in 13 years! This once magnificent patch was reduced to a field of rubble when we re-surveyed it in 2004. Recently published in Hydrobiologia.
Coral reef monitoring techniques
Philip Dustan and I are collaborating on various ways to render coral reef video monitoring more time and cost effective. One of these projects aims at evaluating the effectiveness of point count in degrading reef systems. This work in progress was presented at the 2007 Southeastern Ecology and Evolution Conference, held in Orlando, Florida.
Population dynamics, and intra- and interspecific interactions in fish ectoparasites
These projects started as biometry class projects! I collaborated with my dear friends Dr. Isaure de Buron and Tiffany Baker to look at intra- and inter-specific competition between a monogenean and a copepod parasitizing the gills of the stripped mullet in South Carolinian estuaries, I was responsible for data analysis and statistics. We are still working on their population dynamics in the Charleston estuarine system (South Carolina).
I am interested in mechanisms involved in life diversification in the deep sea, using taxa within the subclass Octocorallia as model systems. My research interests range from macroevolution to population genetics, and my motivations are rooted in marine conservation.
Some of the fundamental questions I am interested in are: (1) What is the origin of octocoral taxa? Whether octocorals originated in the deep-sea and radiated in shallow water or the opposite is unknown, and this question is hard to tackle because of the lack of a fossil record. Recent phylogenetic work on the subclass may help shed light on those questions. (2) Why are there so many octocoral species in the deep-sea? What are the mechanisms promoting speciation and biodiversity in the deep-sea? (3) Understanding patterns of dispersal is central to the comprehension of biodiversity and biogeography. However, still little is known on the mechanisms underlying such patterns in the marine environment, as dispersal is hard to measure and influenced by complex stochastic processes. What are the mechanisms allowing populations of benthic, colonial, slow growing organisms to sustain themselves in a patchy environment? (4) Deep-sea fishing has been compared to forest clear-cutting. What are the dangers facing octocoral populations when confronted with destructive deep-sea trawling? It is likely that successive trawling on seamounts will push populations to a bottleneck. As we gather information on gene flow between seamount populations, it is crucial to model the effect of population constriction on genetic diversity.
Please find a PDF copy of my CV here.
Some of my work in the lab of Scott France has been mentioned in a recent NEWSFOCUS article in Science. This article details some of our results on the origins of deep-sea octocorals, presented at the 2010 SICB meeting in Seattle during the Cnidarian Tree of Life symposium.
Alex Agassiz, 1888
