Clint Oakley

Teaching

• BIOL 228 - 2024 Animal Diversity
  as Lecturer

The diversity and productivity of the coral reef ecosystem is depends on the symbiosis between corals and their internal algae. Coral bleaching is cellular stress visible to the naked eye across scales, from the individual polyp to ecosystems, as corals shed their algae at high temperatures. My research spans the intersection of these scales using "omics", cell biology, and ecophysiology techniques in coral models. I specialize in proteomics, which seeks to quantify the proteins in the cell as a direct measure of organism phenotype and function. At Victoria University of Wellington we apply proteomics and other “omics” methods, such as metabolomics and transcriptomics, as powerful means of disentangling the cellular mechanisms of symbiosis establishment, performance, maintenance, and breakdown to predict the future survival trajectories of reefs.