w/Adam Reitzel at University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The overall goal for this collaborative research is to determine trade-offs favoring the emergence of colonial individuals from solitary ancestors. We are experimentally identifying the costs and benefits associated with the expression of a phenotypically engineered colonial morphology within a solitary species. We are using a multidisciplinary approach combining biochemistry, growth and reproductive rates, and transcriptomics to compare the physiological and molecular consequences of a colonial life history through experimental manipulation of development in a model cnidarian, the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis

w/Jon Allen at College of William & Mary

We are examining congeneric seastars found within a hybrid zone along the northwestern Atlantic (Asterias forbesi and Asterias rubens) to test the ecological, genetic and biochemical underpinnings of an apparent bet-hedging strategy. These hybridizing species produce more than two-fold intraclutch variation in egg volume, suggesting very different levels of per-offspring investment in a single reproductive bout. However, the biochemical and genetic basis for this variation and its ecological consequences are unknown.

w/Jose Carlos Hernandez at Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands

Diadema africanum is a recently described sea urchin from the Eastern Atlantic archipelagos and adults play a major ecological role mediating the transition between two alternative ecosystem states: macroalgal beds and urchin barrens. We have described for the first time the egg characteristics, fertilization, and larval development of this important species. Our results suggest that the unique Echinopluteus transversus morphology of the pluteus larvae of D. africanum may facilitate long distance dispersal among isolated archipelagos. These long-lived larvae may also provide a buffering pool of individuals in the plankton for seeding benthic adult populations that undergo boom-bust cycles of abundance.