Jamie McDevitt-Irwin

Stanford University | SU · Department of Biology

Corals are imminently threatened by climate change-amplified marine heatwaves. Yet how to conserve reef ecosystems faced with this threat remains unclear, since protected reefs often seem equally or more susceptible to thermal stress as unprotected ones. Here, we disentangle this apparent paradox, revealing that the relationship between reef distur...

In a time of unprecedented ecological change, understanding natural biophysical relationships between reef resilience and physical drivers is of increasing importance. This study evaluates how wave forcing structures coral reef benthic community composition and recovery trajectories after the major 2015/2016 bleaching event in the remote Chagos Arc...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s00442-021-04886-y

Unraveling the processes that drive diversity patterns remains a central challenge for ecology, and an increased understanding is especially urgent to address and mitigate escalating diversity loss. Studies have primarily focused on singular taxonomic groups, but recent research has begun evaluating spatial diversity patterns across multiple taxono...

Coral‐associated bacteria and endosymbiotic algae (Symbiodiniaceae spp.) are both vitally important for the biological function of corals. Yet little is known about their co‐occurrence within corals, how their diversity varies across coral species, or how they are impacted by anthropogenic disturbances. Here, we sampled coral colonies (n = 472) fro...

1.Herbivory is a key process on coral reefs which, through grazing of algae, can help sustain coral‐dominated states on frequently‐disturbed reefs and reverse macroalgal regime shifts on degraded ones. 2.Our understanding of herbivory on reefs is largely founded on feeding observations at small spatial scales, yet the biomass and structure of herbi...

Emerging evidence indicates that individual stressors can modify the coral microbiome; however, few studies have examined the impacts of multiple stressors through natural climatic events. During periods of low and high heat stress associated with the 2015–2016 El Niño, we tracked the microbiomes of two coral species (Porites lobata and Montipora a...

Impacts of global climate change on coral reefs are being amplified by pulse heat stress events, including El Niño, the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Despite reports of extensive coral bleaching and up to 97% coral mortality induced by El Niño events, a quantitative synthesis of the nature, intensity, and drivers of El Niño...

Our growing awareness of the microbial world’s importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about mi...

The microbial contribution to ecological resilience is still largely overlooked in coral reef ecology. Coral-associated bacteria serve a wide variety of functional roles with reference to the coral host, and thus, the composition of the overall microbiome community can strongly influence coral health and survival. Here, we synthesize the findings o...

Identifying and protecting coastal nursery habitats is imperative as human impacts to these areas accelerate. Nursery habitats support higher juvenile (1) density, (2) growth, or (3) survival (hereafter nursery role metrics) than other habitats, resulting in a greater contribution to adult populations. Seagrass habitat is commonly referred to as a...

Marine conservation is often perceived as being in conflict with fisheries management. In Canada, at-risk marine fishes denied listing under the Species at Risk Act (SARA) are meant to receive comparable measures under the Fisheries Act. We assess the effectiveness of these Acts by examining (i) how long it takes a marine fish assessed as being at...