James Fifer, PhD candidate of the Davies Lab, and Brenna Stallings, MS student of the Rotjan Lab, are recipients of the 2021 Dana Wright Fellowship.
James is interested in investigating genomic signatures of latitudinal adaptation in several different coral species. He is employing physiological and population genetic tools to answer these questions. His current work focuses on the recent range expansion of a tropical coral, Acropora hyacinthus, into waters surrounding temperate mainland Japan. He is also looking at both temperature preference and population connectivity of the temperate coral Astrangia poculata throughout its extensive range (from Texas to Massachusetts) and the tropical corals Pocillopora verrucosa and Goniastrea edwardsi across the islands of the Marianas Archipelago. Understanding connectivity between coral populations and adaptation to local temperatures will help predict future coral distributions under a changing climate.
Brenna’s research focuses on investigating the role of a fast-growing Pacific coral, Montipora aequituberculata, and its role in facilitation and succession of coral reefs. Her work is done using data collected in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area and makes use of photomosaics, which are composite images of the reefs. By tracing individual corals across time, she can learn which corals survive and grow and which colonies die off. This will help her to determine if M. aequituberculata can benefit other species by acting as a placeholder, allowing more slowly growing species to become established, or if M. aequituberculata outcompetes other species and dampens biodiversity. This work is part of a larger project with collaborators in other labs to track the trajectory of coral reefs across time and answer overarching questions about resiliency and reef dynamics.
This fellowship was established in memory of Dana Wright (CAS ’00), an alum of the BU Marine Program. After completing her studies, Wright went on to work in research in right whale acoustics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod.
Congratulations, James and Brenna!