Job Type
Teaching/Education
Research
Natural Resource Management
Subject Area
Biological Oceanography
Marine Ecology
Activities
See http://www.ncl.ac.uk/biology/staff/profile/j.c.bythell
Skills
Large-scale coral bleaching episodes were unknown prior to 1979 but have become more frequent and culminated in 1998 with an event that caused mass mortality on coral reefs across much of the Indian Ocean. These events are linked to environmental stress, particularly temperature increases, and in addition to the local and regional loss of biodiversity, may represent the first case of the collapse of an ecosystem due to global climate change. Coral bleaching is consequently the focus of major initiatives supported by the World Bank and UNESCO. Concurrent with these mass bleaching events, there has been widespread concern over the emergence of coral diseases over the past 2-3 decades. Reef core data from Belize indicates that the mass mortality of two of the dominant coral species in the Caribbean is unprecedented in at least the last 3000 years, which suggests a link to anthropogenic activities. Unfortunately, identification and characterisation of the causal agents of most coral diseases remains unresolved or poorly characterised. My research group addresses these areas by applying molecular approaches to understanding microbial ecology of corals and coral reefs.
