Shallow water marine communities are experiencing rapid change driven by increasing disturbances due to climate change. Understanding how marine animals cope with rapidly changing environmental conditions is essential for their conservation. As an evolutionary behavioral ecologist, my goal is to understand the relationship between variation in environmental conditions and the variation in behavioral response of the individual. My research focuses primarily on the behavioral plasticity of marine invertebrates and reef fishes. My students and I use a combination of laboratory studies, field surveys and computer modeling to evaluate and predict the impact of changing environmental conditions on population structure and response. In my behavioral ecology course, I teach students models of optimal behavioral strategies and the complex evolutionary tradeoffs between morphology, life history, ecology and behavior. In my field ecology course, I teach students how to design, collect and analyze field observations to address specific ecological hypotheses. I also work closely with academic and government biologists to create individual-based population models of key species to be used for scenario planning and population forecasting. My hope is that the behavioral plasticity of animals will help them to persist in our rapidly changing environment until we can find sustainable solutions to the loss of critical habitats.
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Project Notes
The Childress lab received a National Science Foundation RAPID award from Biological Oceanography titled "A comparison of acute heat stress and fish abundance influencing coral survival".
Welcome to the Childress lab Sarah Rider (PhD student) and Camille White (MS student). Congratulations to Sarah Rider on her National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Congratulations to Kea Payton for her NOAA NASA Dr. Kathryn D Sullivan Earth and Marine Science Fellowship from SC Sea Grant, and her Call Me Doctor Fellowship from Clemson University. Congratulations to Luke Stoeber for his Lerner Gray Fund for Marine Research award from the American Museum of National History and his Slocum-Lunz Foundation award. Congratulations to Tara Cronin for her Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fund grant from the American Museum of Natural History. Congratulations to Ashley Gambrell for her Sherry Reed Memorial Undergraduate Marine Conservation Scholarship from the Women Divers Hall of Fame. Our new global challenge course, SUST 2040 Ocean and Climate Sustainability is a huge success. |
Recent Publications
Childress, M.J., C. Holt, and R.D. Bertelsen. 2024. Displaced juvenile and subadult Caribbean spiny lobsters show strong orientation toward home dens. Fisheries Research (in press)
Payton, T.G., A.M. Metzger, M.J. Childress. 2024. Marine debris harbor unique functionally similar cryptofauna communities. Integrative and Comparative Biology icae113, https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icae113 Payton, T.G., R.J. Sims, and M.J. Childress. 2024. Abundance, patterns, and taxa associations of anthropogenic marine debris on reefs in the middle Florida Keys. Frontiers in Marine Science 11:1412858. http://doi.2010.3389/fmars.2024.1412858 Tallapragada, M., R.J. Sims, T.G. Payton, K.R. Noonan, K.E. Bridgeford, K.M. Smith, M. Fuentes, K.L. Prosser, M.J. Childress. 2023. Something Very Fishy (SVF): A STEAM approach to communicating climate and ocean Literacy. Pages 295-310 in: Teaching Communication Across Disciplines. J. Burchfield and A. Kendrowicz, Editors. Lexington Books. Smith, K.M., L. Chamberlain, S. Whitaker, A. Kimbrel and M.J. Childress. 2023. Factors influencing stoplight parrotfish territoriality and social structure in the middle Florida Keys. Environmental Biology of Fishes (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-023-01394-1 Titus, K., L. O’Connell, K. Matthee and M.J. Childress. 2022. The influence of foureye butterflyfish (Chaetodon capistratus) and Symbiodiniaceae on the transmission of stony coral tissue loss disease. Frontiers in Marine Science 9: 800423. doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.800423 Butterflyfish feeding on SCTLD Video Sims, R.J., M. Tallapragada, T.G. Payton, K.R. Noonan, K.L. Prosser, and M.J. Childress. 2021. University experiences of marine science research and outreach beyond the classroom. Integrative and Comparative Biology doi.org/10.1093/icb/icab104 Noonan, K., T. Fair, K. Matthee, K. Sox, K. Smith, and M.J. Childress. 2021. Reef fish associations with natural and artificial structures in the Florida Keys. Oceans 2(3), 634-648 https://www.mdpi.com/2673-1924/2/3/36 Tallapragada, M., K.L. Prosser, K.F. Braffitt, K.E. Bridgeford, E.C. Gleaton, M.G. Saverance, K.R. Noonan, T.G. Payton, R.J. Sims, K.M. Smith, and M.J. Childress. 2021. Something Very Fishy: An informal STEAM project making a case for ocean conservation and climate change. Environmental Communication DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2021.1913208 Noonan, K.R. and M.J. Childress. 2020. Association of butterflyfishes and stony coral tissue loss disease in the Florida Keys. Coral Reefs. DOI: 10.1007/s00338-020-01986-8 Smith, K.M., T.G. Payton, R.J. Sims, C.S. Stroud, R.C. Jeanes, T.B. Hyatt, and M.J. Childress. 2019. Impacts of consecutive bleaching events on transplanted coral colonies in the Florida Keys. Coral Reefs. DOI: 10.1007/s00338-019-01823-7 Smith, K.M., B.E. Quirk-Royal, K. Drake-Lavelle and M.J. Childress. 2018. Influence of ontogenetic phase and resource availability on parrotfish foraging preferences in the Florida Keys (USA). Marine Ecology Progress Series Vol. 603: 175–187. DOI: 10.3354/meps12718 |
News & Blogs
The Heroic Effort to Save Florida's Coral Reef from Devastating Heat.
The Conversation Before and After Coral Bleaching - YouTube Video Clemson Marine Research @clemsonmarineresearch Together: SVF Coral Reef Adventure - YouTube Video Something Very Fishy Online Volume 5, Issue 2, March 2024 Getting the Message 2022 Clemson News SVF Takes New Approach 2020 Clemson News Something Very Fishy 2019 Clemson World Magazine STEAM on the Rise 2019 Southern Theatre Combating Ocean Decline 2019 Decipher Magazine Coral Crusader 2018 Clemson World Research Magazine Conservation of Marine Resources Creative Inquiry Team Blog |
Dr. Michael Childress
Dept. of Biological Sciences
Dept. of Forestry and Environmental Conservation
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634-0314
864.985.2384
Dept. of Biological Sciences
Dept. of Forestry and Environmental Conservation
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634-0314
864.985.2384