How do biotic traits and environmental variables relate to modularity, interconnectedness, and persistence of marine and aquatic communities? 

We focus on the ecology of foundation species in ecosystems of coral reefs, seagrass meadows, salt marshes, mangrove forests, bivalve reefs, 

and deep-sea coral and sponge habitats. 

Ecomechanics and spatio-temporal dispersion modeling to understand complex marine and aquatic systems. Hydrodynamics as a force that interacts with topographic complexity to affect the population and community-level processes and patterns such as connectivity, settlement, growth, dispersion, competition and facilitation, and food web stability and persistence.