> Research Interests & Current Projects
Conservation genetics of marine invertebrates and vernal pool crustaceans

Habitat fragmentation poses one of the greatest threats to species whose persistence depends on successful dispersal between suitable habitats, such as vernal pools. In less than a century, urbanization and agricultural conversion have destroyed 90% of this extraordinary resource.

Vernal pools depend upon a unique combination of winter rains, torrid summer temperatures, and impermeable soils. The pools harbor one of the most distinctive floras and faunas in the world, with >80% of diversity consisting of endemics adapted to some of the most extreme and variable environments on earth. It is now clear that the ecological and evolutionary viability of most of these species depends on a complex interplay between local extinction, especially during years of low rainfall, and re-colonization.

Although the distinctive vernal pool flora has been well-studied, virtually nothing is know about the fauna. Several years ago, Jamie King, a former grad student in the Grosberg Lab, initiated a series of genetic and systematic studies, aimed at characterizing the effects of habitat patchiness on genetic structure and species diversity in endemic tadpole shrimp, several species of which are now federally "protected", thanks in part to Jamie's research. Like the endemic plants that thrive in vernal pools, these species require intact complexes at the scale of regional landscapes in order to persist. I plan to expand this project by characterizing genetic structure in other sympatric species of branchiopod crustaceans, and coupling this research with spatial and temporal models that link local and regional extinction-recolonization processes to genetic structure.

I have also recently become involved in efforts to examine the effects of global climate change, overfishing, pollution, and habitat fragmentation on the resilience of coral reefs. I was a member of a small international group of scientists who met in October 2002 in Queensland, Australia to synthesize ecological, genetic, environmental, and paleontological perspectives on threats to coral reefs, focusing on one of the most intact reefs in the world, the Great Barrier Reef. To learn more about this project, follow this link.