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For further information, contact the MBL Communications Office at (508) 289-7423 or e-mail us at comm@mbl.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 20, 2011
Contact: Susan Joslin, (508) 289-7281; sjoslin@mbl.edu
Smithsonian Biologist to Discuss the Future of Coral Reefs at July 29 MBL Friday Evening Lecture
WOODS HOLE, MA—At least one quarter of everything that lives in the ocean lives with coral reefs. These rainforests of the sea have declined around the world, sometimes catastrophically. Until recently, the primary culprits have been overfishing, pollution, and disease, but more recently threats posed by invasive species, climate change, and ocean acidification are of increasing concern. Given all the doom and gloom, is there any hope for coral reefs?
Renowned coral reef biologist and Smithsonian Institution researcher Dr. Nancy Knowlton will discuss the state of coral reefs, the impact of climate change on the planet’s reef systems, and what hope there is for the future at the July 29 MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory) Friday Evening Lecture at 8:00 PM in the MBL's Lillie Auditorium, 7 MBL Street, Woods Hole. The lecture, titled "Coral Reefs: Past, Present and Future," is free and open to the public.
Dr. Knowlton holds the Sant Chair in Marine Science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where her research focuses on coral reefs and the diversity of life in the ocean. She has studied coral reefs all over the world for more than three decades. Dr. Knowlton received a B.A. at Harvard University, a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, and was a NATO postdoctoral fellow. Later, she was a professor at Yale University, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and professor and founding director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Dr. Knowlton has held advisory positions with the National Geographic Society, the World Bank, and the Census of Marine Life and currently serves on the editorial board of the Annual Review of Marine Science, the Pew Marine Fellows Advisory Committee, and the national boards of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Coral Reef Alliance. She is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, winner of the Peter Benchley prize for science in the service of conservation, and author of Citizens of the Sea: Wondrous Creatures from the Census of Marine Life.
The Friday Evening Lecture Series will continue throughout the summer at the MBL. The remaining lectures in the series are below. For more information, visit www.mbl.edu/FEL
August 5, 2011
Glassman Lecture
"The Broad Spectrum of Prion-Like Diseases and the Quest for Therapeutics"
Stanley B. Prusiner, University of California, San Francisco; Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1997
August 11, 2011
Lederberg Lecture
"The Biochemistry of Inflammation: from Microciona to the Microbiome"
Gerald Weissmann, New York University School of Medicine
August 12, 2011
"Genetic Insight Into Candida Infection Biology"
Aaron P. Mitchell, Carnegie Mellon University
August 19, 2011
Sager Lecture
"Revisiting the Heuser and Reese Synapse in the 21st Century: Do Nerve Cells Kiss?" - Erik M. Jorgensen, University of Utah, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery and improving the human condition through research and education in biology, biomedicine, and environmental science. Founded in 1888 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the MBL is an independent, nonprofit corporation.
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