ECOLOGY
PHYSIOLOGY
CELL BIOLOGY
BIOINFORMATICS
INTEGRATIVE MARINE BIOLOGY
PHOTO-ENDOSYMBIOSIS
I study the mechanisms that shape and sustain marine ecosystems, particularly coral reefs. Coral reefs likely evolved in nutrient-poor waters after corals formed a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic dinoflagellates. This partnership now fuels the incredible productivity and diversity of reef systems. Or at least, it was. Now climate change has begun to rip away the fabric of this relationship's ecological stability and the entire ecosystem is under threat. Truly, I believe that photo-endosymbiosis is the engine behind coral reef persistence.
This drives me to research endosymbiotic adaptation, acclimatization, reproduction, dispersal, and more. ​To explorer these ideas, I use a range of techniques and organisms. One of my favorite approaches involves working with bleached cnidarian hosts to study how symbiosis is re-established under different conditions. These experiments help isolate key mechanisms of symbiotic establishment and offer insight into the broader forces that drive ecological success.
ACCLIMATIZATION
How organisms respond to environmental change determines their ecological and evolutionary success. Within the context of rapidly progressing climate change, acclimatization and adaptation is central to organismal survival, and therefore helps to explain how ecosystems continue to persist.
Historically, I've explored this challenge through the lens of observable traits. I developed a high-throughput method for characterize the morphology of endosymbiotic dinoflagellates (Anthony et al. 2023 PLoS One), which helped reveal that corals and jellyfish likely rely on the cellular plasticity of their endosymbionts to cope with environmental change (Anthony et al. 2023 Front Ecol and Evol). I've also identified how trait distributions shift across environments (Anthony et al. 2024 Mar Ecol; Anthony et al. 2022 Zoomorphology; Wagner et al. 2025 Sci Tot Environ) and during seasonal change (e.g., Anthony et al., 2024 Mar Pollut Bull).
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Building on this foundation, I now focus on more fundamental questions that explore the hidden mechanisms of ecosystem persistence. These efforts aim to uncover previously unrecognized strategies of acclimatization and adaptation, which I hope will inform both basic biology and applied conservation.
CONSERVATION BIOLOGY
Conservation biology has pushed us too far towards rapid quantifiable outcomes that have no long term success. Coral restoration and rehabilitation is one of the most important and highly funded efforts in marine science. Yet, many projects are unsuccessful, and none have successfully built resilience into their coral stock, which is necessary if rehabilitated reefs are to survive climate change. In an effort to resolve this issue, I explore conservation techniques that integrate fundamental biology with conservation biology, as I believe this is how we will keep up with climate change.
I primarily pursue this within my primary expertise of photo-endosymbiosis and phenotypic plasticity. For example, I have been trying to connect the dynamics of the coral endosymbionts to long term restoration success (Lock et al. In review). Alongside this, my collaborators and I are trying to develop specific techniques that build resilience and/or detect stress for implementation into restoration and rehabilitation programs. This includes the proposed fusion of corals with different environmental memories (Anthony et al. 2025 One Earth) and the use of dinoflagellate phenotypes to monitor coral reefs (Anthony et al. 2024 Mar Pollut Bull).
THE NEUSTONIC ECOSYSTEM
​As mentioned initially, I am broadly interested in the mechanisms responsible for the formation and persistence of marine ecosystems. Coral reefs are among the most diverse and biologically complex systems on Earth, making their evolutionary and ecological mechanisms difficult to untangle. In contrast, the neustonic ecosystem (the ecosystem at the open ocean's surface) is comparatively simple but similarly centered around Cnidaria. Despite only having a few obligate inhabitants (Helm 2021 PLoS Biology), these organisms are important trophic contributors (e.g., Anthony 2024 Food Webs) and uniquely distribute via both wind and oceanic currents.
My work has shown that these animals evolved from benthic ancestors (Anthony et al. 2024 Current Biology).and have since diversified into unique species, depending on their ocean basin (Church et al. 2025 Current Biology). Now, bringing the story full circle, we've discovered that one of the key neustonic species, Velella, is washing ashore in massive numbers, and inside them is a species of completely undescribed endosymbiotic dinoflagellate.​​ Could this symbiont be the key to Velella's success? More importantly, can we draw meaningful parallels with the dinoflagellates that dominate coral reefs?
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OPEN SCIENCE
Scientific research is often inaccessible to the general public, largely due to high costs and institutional barriers. This limits both innovation and inclusivity. However, citizen science offers a powerful way to bridge this gap, especially when studying organisms that are visible and charismatic. Jellyfish, for example, are striking and occasionally dangerous animals that frequently wash up on public beaches, making them ideal candidates for community-sourced observations. Leveraging this accessibility, I use iNaturalist to model the environmental niche space and distributions of jellyfishes (Anthony et al. 2023, Animals; Wagner et al. 2025 Sci Tot Environ). This is proving a valuable tool to pursue more advanced research questions on acclimatization and adaptation. Specifically, citizen scientists can detect seasonality, distributional limits, and range shifts that would be difficult to capture through conventional fieldwork alone thus proving to be a useful tool for studying phenotypes, monitoring ecosystems, and identifying an organism's physiological extremes.
