Coral reefs are diverse ecosystems and serve many purposes including preventing erosion on coastlines and acting as a source of food, income, and culture. Acropora cervicornis, a staghorn coral, has faced a significant 80-89% decline in the Caribbean, attributed to a poorly-characterized epizootic, White Band Disease (WBD). Previous studies showed...
As important ecological cornerstones, coral reefs face threats from a myriad of sources, such as global climate change, and importantly, disease, the latter often as a result of microbial pathogens. An understudied group of major corals, fire corals, and their even less understood microbiome present an opportunity to learn more...
On coral reefs, disturbances rarely occur in isolation. Global stressors such as increasing seawater temperature often coincide with local stressors like nutrient pollution. In the face of increasing anthropogenic stress, corals can function as environmental sentinels, although little is known about how multiple stressors interact to disrupt their associated bacterial...
Stony corals are the ecosystem engineers of the vital, dynamic, and complex marine ecosystem known as coral reefs. Globally, coral reefs are undergoing degradation from multiple anthropogenic stressors. Coral reef organism holobionts, or the host along with its microbial components, are key to reef ecosystem success and functioning. Marine microbes...
Corals have multiple roles in maintaining ocean health and are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. The coral animal is host to a multitude of taxa, including symbiotic dinoflagellate algae, fungi, bacteria, protists, and viruses. Environmental stressors and disease agents can perturb the delicate balance of the coral host...
In host-associated microbiomes, the mechanisms that regulate community composition or the principles that govern dynamics remain far from clear. However, understanding how the structure of microbial communities shift as the system moves away from a healthy state is critical to assessing disease progression and to formulate any potential mitigation strategy....
Coral reef ecosystems continue to be significantly altered by disease epizootics, but why some host populations remain resistant while others succumb to outbreaks remains unknown. Research across diverse animal and plant host systems has revealed that disease severity is strongly influenced by host genetics and by environmental influences on both...
With mounting distrust for science, finding effective ways to educate the next generation of scientists has become increasingly important. Microbiology is a prevalent and complex subject and is at the forefront of developing cutting-edge technologies for a more in-depth look into the unseen world. However, many people are only ever...