BIO

I am a second-year meteorology student born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. After obtaining my undergraduate degree, I hope to attend graduate school to earn my Ph.D. in meteorology. My research interests include tropical meteorology, climate science, and how those two topics are intertwined. After completing my education, I intend on working in the public sector.

Spatial patterns of macroalgal dominance in the lagoons of Moorea, French Polynesia

Abstract

Understanding how shifts to macroalgae-dominated states in historically coral-dominated ecosystems occur has been a vital concept to the field of ecology in recent years. As we see more and more drastic phase shifts to macroalgal states take place, it has become increasingly important to improve our understanding of when and where these shifts will occur. We have chosen to specifically focus on four 15x15m sites within the lagoon of the island Moorea, French Polynesia, which span a gradient of coral vs. macroalgal dominance. The objective of our project is to understand if the size and quantity of structure habitable to macroalgae in an area is correlated with the proportion of macroalgae present. Our methodology for this project included creating orthomosaics for each of our sites then using an image annotation software program to identify where habitable structure and Turbinaria ornata are located within these images. Once the locations had been identified, we then used R to read the spatial data to analyze the distribution of algae across and within sites. Across sites, we found no significant correlation between the amount of structure and amount of algae present, but within sites, the strength of the relationship between the size of individual pieces of structure and the proportion of macroalgae present varied. This leads our group to believe that there are other variables aside from habitat availability affecting the dominance of macroalgae, such as levels of herbivory and fishing practices, yet we plan to continue these analyses across more sites.

Keywords: macroalgae, ecology, coral, phase shifts