Halmos College Researchers Study Ocean Acidification in Belize

This summer, Halmos faculty member Nicole Fogarty, Ph.D. and three of her master’s students spent two week in Belize. There they studied the effects of ocean acidification and warming on the earliest life history stages of threatened acroporid corals.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, master’s students Megan Bock, Kelly Pitts, and Morgan Hightshoe collected data to determine the physiological effects of ocean acidification.

Fogarty’s lab focuses on ecological and evolutionary questions related to the fertilization success of broadcast spawners. Her lab is particularly interested in how density dependent mechanisms of reproduction will influence invertebrate population recovery, as well as spawning synchrony, reproductive isolation, and speciation.