Marine Benthic Ecology and Ecophysiology

Yvonne Sawall is the principle investigator of the Marine Benthic Ecology and Ecophysiology (MABEE) Laboratory at ASU BIOS. Her research focuses on shallow water coral reefs and seagrass meadows integrating aspects of physiology, ecology and oceanography.  The overarching question of her research is how organisms and communities interact with their environment, while focusing primarily on key metabolic processes (photosynthesis, respiration and calcification) of foundation species (corals and seagrass). Understanding responses of corals and seagrass to persisting and changing environmental conditions is of paramount importance, since they form the basis of ecologically and economically important ecosystems, that are exposed to increasing threat of local and global stressors. Hence the mission of the MABEE lab is to elucidate potential impacts of global change on important coastal ecosystems by understanding strategies and limitations of keystone organisms and of benthic communities to respond to different environmental conditions.

Currently, the MABEE lab pursues three lines of research, which include

(i) organismal and community metabolism and their drivers in coral reefs,
(ii) coral thermal tolerance and thermal stress mitigation, and
(iii) seagrass functional processes and restoration.

The MABEE lab applies a number of state-of-the-art and cutting-edge approaches and is particularly invested in developing and applying in-situ technologies, such as the gradient flux technique to measure reef productivity and a novel fully automated in-situ incubation set up (BIO-RESORT) that allows in-situ metabolic rate and flux measurements. Instruments for continues monitoring of in-situ environmental conditions (Seabird SeapHOx, McLane RAS water samplers) are part of the lab, as well. Furthermore, a range of organism-specific methods are utilized to elucidate physiological mechanisms of stress responses that are conducted on living organisms (e.g, PAM fluorometry, incubations, growth rates, etc.) or on sacrificed tissue (e.g., pigment analysis, biomass determination, proteomics). The recently upgraded “Bermuda Marine Mesocosm Facility” (BMMF) supports novel and near-natural Climate Change research and more.

Students interested in pursuing a PhD in this lab, please contact Dr. Yvonne Sawall.