Anya Brown
University of California-Davis, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Disease outbreaks are rising in ocean species, and warmer water often makes them worse. Yet some populations crash while others barely suffer, and scientists cannot easily predict which will be hit.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Plant Science & Agriculture
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
eelgrass
Zostera marina
seagrass
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Compare wasting disease severity and eelgrass productivity across a field temperature gradient, using field surveys and reciprocal transplants of Zostera marina between sites.
- Measure in the lab how temperature shapes the interaction between the wasting-disease pathogen and warm-adapted versus cold-adapted eelgrass populations.
- Determine whether prior infection in eelgrass, a plant without immune memory, changes its response to later disease attacks across different temperatures.
More about the research
Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is a good test case. It is a seagrass, a flowering plant that lives underwater. Its meadows protect shorelines from erosion and shelter commercially important marine animals. Eelgrass is often infected by a slime-mold pathogen that causes eelgrass wasting disease, which leaves dark brown lesions on the leaves. The effects range from small losses in growth to the death of whole meadows.
Why it matters
Eelgrass meadows protect coastlines and support fisheries, but wasting disease can wipe them out. By showing which eelgrass populations resist disease and warming, this work could help local, state and federal agencies and nonprofits decide where to focus restoration and protection. It may also help predict which marine populations are at risk of outbreaks as waters warm.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alexandra Bijak
William & Mary, VA·Ecology & Evolution
Test how the strength and direction of seagrass-bivalve interactions change with seagrass species and bivalve type, by adding bivalves to meadows dominated by early-successional versus climax seagrasses and measuring growth of both.
Carly Kenkel
University of Southern California, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether differences in staghorn coral shape plasticity are driven by changes in calcification and fine-scale skeletal deposition, using a lab water-flow experiment on clonal replicates of Acropora cervicornis genotypes.
Michael Henson
Northern Illinois University, IL·Ecology & Evolution
Identify environmental reservoirs of the DaScPc ciliate parasite through time-series surveys of urchins, macroalgae and corals in the U.S. Virgin Islands, alongside measurements of ocean conditions and host density.
The school
University of California-Davis: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 647 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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