Allyson DeMerlis, PhD
Coral Reef Molecular Ecologist
Welcome! I’m a marine biologist working to help coral reefs survive a changing ocean. I am an Assistant Scientist in Dr. Diego Lirman’s lab at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School, where I study coral resilience to environmental stress to improve the efficacy of restoration efforts.
For my PhD at the University of Miami (2024), advised by Dr. Ian Enochs (NOAA AOML) and Dr. Nikki Traylor-Knowles (UM), I studied the molecular mechanisms of enhancing coral resilience to thermal stress, testing whether corals can be “stress-hardened” with variable temperature treatments before they are outplanted.
I’m committed to open science: my code lives on GitHub, and I keep a running online lab notebook of my analyses.
Research highlights
Corallivory and outplant survival
Spatiotemporal patterns of fish predation on restored corals, and predictive models of predation pressure to inform restoration site selection.
Learn more
Thermal priming and molecular stress responses
Transcriptomic mechanisms of stress-hardening, acclimatization to thermally variable environments, and species-specific gene expression responses to heat stress.
Learn more
Coral growth, disease, and reproduction
3D quantification of microfragment growth, stony coral tissue loss disease, and assisted sexual reproduction of Acropora cervicornis at Mote Marine Laboratory.
Learn more