Peter J. Edmunds
Professor
Ph.D. Glasgow University
Phone: 818.677.2502
Fax: 818.677.2034
e-mail: peter.edmunds@csun.edu
Office Location: SC4113
Research in my lab focuses on the physiological ecology of tropical reef corals. My students and I work at the organismic, population, and community levels, and take a strong hypothesis driven approach to questions that can only be answered by combining laboratory and field experimentation. By combining in situ techniques, basic field facilities and a research laboratory at CSUN, we are able to exploit multidisciplinary approaches to identify the critical processes shaping marine communities. I am particularly excited at the potential to address ecological questions through analyses of fundamental processes at the cellular and subcellular level, employing for example, molecular approaches and in hospite physiological techniques.
The majority of my research focus takes two thematic approaches. First, I study the ecology and long-term dynamics of coral reefs in order to identify temporal trends and provide a rich ecological context within which mechanistic research can be developed. Over the last 18 years, most of my ecological research has taken place on the shallow reefs along the south coast of St. John, US Virgin Islands, where the natural resources are protected within the VI National Park and Biosphere Reserve. Close collaboration with the biologists and resource managers of the VI National Park have been critical in developing this project. Second, I study the biology of individual corals in order to better understand their basic functionality, and to date, most of this work has been completed in Jamaica and the Florida Keys. My mechanistic research is designed to address questions that can help to understand the dynamics recorded in the ecological analyses. For example, my long-term research in St. John has identified the dynamics of juvenile corals (defined operationally as colonies < 4 cm diameter) as a critical process affecting community structure; surprisingly, juvenile corals in this relatively pristine location have higher mortality rates than found in more disturbed locations such as the Florida Keys. To explore the causal basis of this trend, recently we have started to test the effects of thermal stress on early life history stages of reef corals using in situ physiological techniques.
A major thrust of my research program involves forging explicit links between the ecological and physiological analyses of reef corals with the goal of developing the capacity to project how coral populations will change under specified conditions. This approach has considerable potential in better understanding how global climate change will affect reef corals, and we are working towards developing modeling approaches to achieve this outcome.
Current research and funding
Research in my lab currently is funded through NSF awards in the Long Term Research in Environmental Biology program (LTREB; for work in St. John, USVI), and the Long Term Ecological Research Program (LTER; for work in Moorea, French Polynesia). My research in St. John focuses on decadal scale perspectives of coral reef community dynamics (the current award will take the project to its 22nd year), the development of demographic models to better understand the causal basis of changes in coral cover, and the testing of thermal effects on early life history stages of reef corals (i.e., juvenile corals and new recruits). Because our LTER research in Moorea is just beginning, I am very interested in establishing research projects that will allow comparison of fundamental processes affecting coral reef ecology in the Caribbean and the South Pacific.
Our LTER project in Moorea was awarded in September 2004 and initially is funded for six years with the expectation that it will be supported for 30+ years (www.lternet.edu). Together with three other Principal Investigators (Drs. Robert Carpenter [CSUN], Russell Schmitt [UCSB] and Sally Holbrook [UCSB]) and 14 other research scientists, I will be establishing a program to monitor ecological change on the reefs of Moorea, and conduct process-oriented studies to elucidate the mechanisms driving these changes. My responsibilities focus on the scleractinian communities, and during 2005 I will be establishing the monitoring framework for the project. Starting in 2006, I will begin process-oriented studies with analyses of the ecophysiology of early life history stages of several reef corals.
Graduate students
My graduate students work mostly on coral reef research, and all are encouraged to develop their own project independent of the externally-funded research in my lab. Their projects cover a wide diversity of topics within an ecophysiology theme, and all are completed in parallel with existing research projects in the Caribbean and South Pacific. Recent thesis projects have included:
¥ Robin Elahi: The interactive effects of age and size in determining phenotypic plasticity in reef corals.
¥ Laurie Allen-Requa: Mechanisms of adaptation by reef corals to the low irradiance conditions found beneath algal mats.
¥ Geoffrey Horst: The interactive effects of temperature and aragonite saturation state on coral growth.
¥ Joshua Idjadi: The role of scleractinian corals in positive interactions in tropical coastal communities.
¥ Rebecca Habeeb: Acclimation in tropical reef corals.
¥ Diane Gardella: The effect of water flow on the microenvironment and physiology of zooxanthellae in tropical reef corals.
Publications
2004 Edmunds
PJ. The effect of elevated temperature on the aerobic respiration of coral recruits. Marine Biology (published on line).
2004 Edmunds
PJ, Bruno JF, Carlon DB. Effects
of depth and microhabitat on growth and survivorship of juvenile corals in the
Florida Keys. Marine Ecology
Progress Series 278: 115-124.
2004 Edmunds PJ. Coral recruitment tracks rising seawater temperature on a Caribbean reef. Marine Ecology Progress Series 269: 111-119.
2004 Edmunds
PJ, Gates RD. Size-dependent
differences in the physiology of the reef coral Porites astreoides.
Biological Bulletin 206: 61-64.
2003 Idjadi JA, Edmunds PJ. Free living colonies of Porites in Moorea, French Polynesia. Bulletin of Marine Sciences 72: 1025-1031.
2003 Edmunds PJ. Gates RD. Has coral bleaching delayed our understanding of fundamental aspects of coral-dinoflagellate symbioses? Bioscience 53: 976-980.
2003 Edmunds PJ, Gates RD, Gleason DF. The tissue composition of Montastraea franksi during and after a natural bleaching event. Coral Reefs 22: 54-62.
2002 Edmunds PJ. Long term dynamics of shallow coral reefs in St. John, US Virgin Islands. Coral Reefs 21:357-367.
2002 Edmunds PJ, Gates RD. Standardizing physiological data for scleractinian corals. Coral Reefs 21: 193-197.
2001 Edmunds PJ, Gates RD, Gleason DF. The biology of larvae from the reef coral Porites astreoides and their response to temperature disturbances. Marine Biology 139: 981-989.
2001 Zilberberg C, Edmunds PJ. Competition among small colonies of Agaricia: the importance of size asymmetry in determining competitive outcome. Marine Ecology Progress Series 221: 125-133.
2001 River G, Edmunds PJ. Mechanisms of interaction between macroalgae and scleractinians on a coral reef in Jamaica. Journal Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 261: 159-172.
2001 Edmunds PJ, Carpenter RC. Recovery of Diadema Leads to Reduced Macroalgal Cover and Increased Abundance of Juvenile Corals on a Caribbean Reef. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98: 5067-5071.
2000 Gardella DG, Edmunds PJ. The influence of flow regime and morphology on boundary layer characteristics in Scleractinian corals. Journal Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 256: 279-289.
2000 Vollmer SV, Edmunds, PJ. Allometric scaling in the scleractinian Siderastrea siderea (Ellis and Solander). Biological Bulletin 199: 21-28.
2000 Edmunds PJ. Patterns in the distribution of juvenile corals and coral reef community structure in St. John, US Virgin Islands. Marine Ecology Progress Series 202: 113-124.
2000 Edmunds PJ. Measuring the recruitment of scleractinians onto the skeletons of corals that have been killed by black band disease. Coral Reefs 19: 69-74.
1999 Gardella DG, Edmunds PJ. The oxygen microenvironment adjacent to the tissue of the scleractinian Dichocoenia stokesii and its effects on symbiont metabolism. Marine Biology 135: 289-295.
1999 Edmunds PJ. The role of colony morphology and substratum inclination in the success of Millepora alcicornis on shallow coral reefs. Coral Reefs 18: 133-140.
1999 Zilberberg C, Edmunds PJ. Patterns of skeletal structures in the reef corals Montastraea franksi. Bulletin of Marine Science 64: 373-381.
1999 Gates RD, Edmunds PJ. The physiological mechanisms of acclimatization in tropical reef corals. American Zoologist 39: 30-43.
1998 Bruno JF, Edmunds PJ. Metabolic consequences of phenotypic plasticity in the coral Madracis mirabilis (Duchassaing and Michelotti): the effect of morphology and water flow on aggregate respiration. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 229: 187-195.
1998 Edmunds PJ, Aronson RB, Swanson DW, Levitan DR, Precht WF. Photographic versus visual techniques for the quantification of juvenile scleractinians. Bulletin of Marine Science 62: 937-946.
1997 Bruno JF, Edmunds PJ. Clonal variation for phenotypic plasticity in the coral Madracis mirabilis. Ecology 78: 2177-2190.
1996 Edmunds PJ, Bruno JB. The importance of sampling scale in community ecology: Landscape variation in coral reef community structure. Marine Ecology Progress Series 143, 165-171.
1994 Edmunds PJ. Evidence that reef-wide patterns of coral bleaching may be the result of the distribution of bleaching-susceptible coral clones. Marine Biology 121: 137 - 142.