Welcome
Research in the Baum Lab is motivated by a fundamental desire to understand how human activities are changing marine ecosystems, and what the consequences of these changes are for nature and for people. Our current research centres around the following questions: 

• How are marine ecosystems structured and how do they function in the absence of human disturbance?  How do diversity, structure, function and resilience vary across natural environmental gradients?  
• How are climate change, overexploitation, and pollution changing marine ecosystems? How do multiple stressors, such as these, interact and alter marine ecosystems? 

We investigate these questions primarily on tropical coral reefs, on organisms ranging from apex predators to microscopic dinoflagellates. We do so using a suite of approaches including statistical models of large observational data sets - which allow us to empirically test predictions from related theory and small-scale experiments at the ecosystem and global scale - as well as field observations and experiments, molecular analyses and bioinformatics, stable isotope analyses, interviews, historical ecology, and meta-analyses. Our research spans across broad temporal and spatial scales, incorporates principles from population, community and ecosystem ecology, conservation science, and fisheries science and is highly collaborative. Our current foci are tropical coral reefs and temperate eelgrass beds.
We are committed to open science and data sharing, and to outreach aimed at enhancing public understanding of our research, ocean conservation, and science in general. Our overarching goal is to make scientific discoveries that advance understanding of oceanic ecosystems, and inform and inspire effective solutions for their conservation. 

News - Spring 2019
Help support our research on coral reefs and climate change! We are currently raising funds for our 2019 expedition to Kiritimati (Christmas) Island, where we will be studying how the coral reefs are recovering from the 2015-2016 El Niño, and likely capturing another bleaching event, which is forecast to occur later this summer. 

The Baum Lab is recruiting new PhD students and Post-doctoral researchers to conduct field-based and macroecological coral reef research. I am especially interested in recruiting a talented post-doctoral researcher with marine ecology and/or stable isotope experience who could work on various aspects of 'Coral Reef Recovery from Multiple Stressors' (e.g. coral habitat complexity, fish abundance and diversity, fish trophic dynamics and food web requiring) following a mass mortality event. 

Welcome new MSc student Kevin Bruce and summer NSERC USRA student Pierre-Jean Harnois!, May

Our first coral microbiome paper is out!! Led by former MSc student Jamie McDevitt-Irwin, with Becky Vega-Thurber and Melissa Garren (thanks for teaching us about microbes!), we show that both local disturbance and heat stress increase beta diversity of the coral microbiome, March

Our first SfM paper is out now in Scientific Reports! Led by former MSc student Jenn Magel, and in collaboration with John Burns, we show that changes in reef structural complexity are evident just one year after a mass coral mortality event, Feb.   










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University of Victoria, Department of Biology, PO Box 1700 STN CSC, Victoria BC, V8W 2Y2, Canada