Coastal Community Ecology

Our lab seeks to understand how ecological communities are structured and how humans are altering these communities during this time of global change and biodiversity loss. We ask fundamental questions in community ecology that can then inform conservation and management.

We address our research questions across multiple levels of biological organization (e.g., microbes, algae, corals, fishes, sharks), in coastal ecosystems (e.g., rocky intertidal, coral reefs), and integrate field observations, experiments and data synthesis to ask broad questions in community ecology. We are based out of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in the School of Life Sciences.

We acknowledge that the ‘āina (land, earth) on which our lab is based - the ahupuaʻa (land division from mountain to sea) of Waikīkī, in the moku (district) of Kona, on the mokupuni (island) of Oʻahu - is part of the larger territory recognized by Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Indigenous Hawaiians) as their ancestral grandmother, Papahānaumoku. We recognize that her majesty Queen Lili‘uokalani yielded the Hawaiian Kingdom and these territories under duress and protest to the United States to avoid the bloodshed of her people. We further recognize that Hawai‘i remains an illegally occupied state of America.