NightSchool: Life on Reefs - Livestream

Join three Academy postdoctoral researchers for a night covering the latest in coral reef research, from the lab to the reefs, and from corals themselves to the vast range of marine life they support.

• Ecologist and evolutionary biologist Dr. Jennifer Hoey has just returned from doing fieldwork in Curaçao, where she and her colleagues at the Reefscape Genomics Lab have been studying coral reef biodiversity using cutting-edge technology, from advanced genome sequencing to 3D photogrammetry. She’ll share how combining 3D imaging with molecular tools can help us understand coral evolution, past and future, in a genus of Caribbean corals.
   
• Learn about the Academy’s Coral Spawning Lab, one of the world’s only indoor coral-culturing labs, with coral biologist Dr. Elora López-Nandam. Some of the coral babies in the lab are celebrating their third birthdays (!), and Elora shares the process of lab-based coral spawning, what we’re learning about coral genomics, and how the Academy is collaborating with scientists globally to understand coral reproduction for the long-term health of reefs.
   
• Dr. Chancey MacDonald studies the lives of fishes in mesophotic reefs - aka the coral reefs located 100-to-500 feet beneath the ocean’s surface - and how living at such depths affects fish behavior and health, availability of food and habitats, and more. He highlights some of his diving adventures, scientific techniques used, and what he’s learned about life in the deep.