Peer-reviewed Publications

We show that oysters actively regulate the pH of their calcifying fluid in response to tidal changes, while resident microbial nitrogen- and sulfur-cycling genes are linked to host immune and neural pathways. These findings suggest that host and microbial processes may work together to regulate the chemistry underlying shell formation.

We characterized the oyster calcifying-fluid microbiome across three harvesting sites using shotgun metagenomics. The communities included diverse bacteria, archaea, and viruses, as well as microbial metabolisms—including sulfate reduction and denitrification—that could influence calcifying-fluid chemistry and shell formation.

We compared oyster-associated microbial communities across six locations along the U.S. East Coast to ask whether resident microbes persist across geography. Oyster microbiomes were more similar within the same tissue across sites than among different tissues at the same site, revealing tissue-specific resident communities and highlighting the host’s role in shaping its microbiome.

We tracked the Sydney Rock Oyster microbiome from parents through early larval development to investigate how microbes are acquired. The results showed that oyster microbiomes are shaped by both maternal transmission and environmental acquisition, with core microbes persisting across life stages alongside stage-specific communities.

We used a common-garden experiment to distinguish resident from transient members of oyster gill microbiomes across six populations. Most microbial communities remained distinct according to their population of origin, while a smaller fraction shifted with the environment, revealing both deterministic and stochastic processes in microbiome assembly.

We examined how oyster-associated microbial communities respond to ocean acidification, distinguishing direct environmental effects from changes linked to the host’s physiological response. Different microbial groups tracked elevated CO₂ versus changes in oyster extrapallial-fluid pH, showing that environmental stress can reshape host microbiomes through both direct and host-mediated pathways.

We examined bacterial communities across fine spatial gradients surrounding shell disease lesions in juvenile American lobsters. Bacterial diversity and community composition shifted before visible disease at the lesion margin, revealing a microbial transition zone that may precede shell disease progression.