Julie Meyer, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Soil, Water and Ecosystem Sciences, UF

Join us for the livestream October 22nd, 11:45am ET: https://youtube.com/live/ddQjxQERnEk?feature=share

(Please visit our YouTube channel main page for the stream if there are any issues with the direct link.)

ABSTRACT

Microbes drive global biogeochemical cycles and have profound impacts on their multicellular hosts, including ecosystem engineers like stony corals. Warming ocean temperatures, ocean deoxygenation and disease all threaten the survival of coral reefs, but is it possible to use our understanding of beneficial host-associated microbes to mitigate the loss of coral cover? As part of a collaborative, multi-year intervention project, we developed and tested in situ probiotic treatments for stony coral tissue loss disease on Florida’s Coral Reef. Applying probiotic bacteria underwater in natural environments is unprecedented, especially for endangered and protected species like corals, which reflects the severity of this decade-long disease outbreak. This talk will provide an overview of the lessons we learned in the application of coral probiotics, including feasibility in the field, the effect of probiotics on coral survival, and how the coral microbiome responds to probiotic treatment.

BIO

Julie Meyer, Ph.D., is an associate professor in UF’s Department of Soil, Water and Ecosystem Sciences. She is a marine microbial ecologist who specializes in harnessing the power of microbiomes for marine ecosystem restoration. Her lab investigates the relationships between microbes and their hosts to determine the interactions that result in healthy keystone species such as seagrass and corals.

POSTCARD