Dr. Sarah W. Davies leads the Davies Marine Population Genomics Lab at Boston University, where her team studies how marine organisms, particularly corals, respond to climate change. Their research focuses on the genetic and physiological mechanisms of resilience and adaptation in corals, examining how environmental stressors like warming oceans impact coral-algal symbioses, biodiversity, and ecosystem health.

A recent study co-authored by Davies, published in Science, investigates the effects of climate change-driven marine heatwaves on coral genetics and symbiotic relationships. Over six years, researchers tracked the survival and symbiotic associations of the coral Porites during a prolonged heatwave. They discovered that genetically distinct, but visually similar, coral lineages had varied survival rates, with some surviving as little as 15% and others up to 61%. The heatwave also disrupted the close relationships between corals and their algal symbionts, causing symbiotic shifts in some colonies. The study highlights how heatwaves threaten cryptic coral diversity and weaken the coevolved relationships between corals and their symbiotic algae. The analysis of genomic data used in this research was made possible through Boston University’s Shared Computing Cluster.