My MSc Research

September 2019 to August 2021

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Kiritimati Corals - © The Baum Lab
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Soft Corals on Kiritimati - © Maucieri and Baum 2021
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Me convocating - © Dominique G. Maucieri

For my Master's, I was a part of the Baum Lab at the University of Victoria. While I was not actually able to go to my field site due to a global pandemic, I was able to use previously collected photoquadrats to analyze coral communities on Kiritimati, the world's largest atoll. I examined the impacts of local and global disturbances on coral biodiversity. Specifically, I examined the impacts of heat stress on soft corals, an overlooked and highly vulnerable component of coral reef ecosystems and tried to disentangle the impacts of multiple stressors on coral reef diversity through tipping points and interactive effects. This work led to two publications, both of which are currently in review or prep. If you are interested in my MSc research, you can watch some of my previous presentations for the Global Reef Week Conference or Western Society of Naturalists Conference.