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NMNH Coral Lab

Welcome to the Coral Lab at the NMNH
In the NMNH coral lab, we are passionate about understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape patterns in marine biodiversity. Our group primarily studies corals and their relatives because they are some of the most important metazoans on Earth: these animals provide habitat, refuge, and food for many other species from shallow waters to the deep abyss.
By determining the drivers of diversity across multiple scales of space (e.g, reefs to ocean basins) and time (e.g. geological to ecological), we seek to understand how these animals and the ecosystems they support are impacted by one of the greatest threats to our society: global ocean change.
Through our location at the NMNH and by access to its collections, we are able to utilize a fully integrative approach— employing morphological, genomic, ecological, and bioinformatic methods— in our study of the coral tree of life.