Dr. Pamela Hallock Muller

Reef health is the focus of research in Dr. Muller's laboratory. Techniques used range from traditional micropaleontology, sedimentology and ecology to molecular genetics and biomarkers to study of the responses of reefs, modern and ancient, to environmental change. Dr. Muller seeks graduate students who are eager to get wet, use microscopes, and learn and develop state-of-the-art bioindicator technology. Specific projects in which graduate students are involved include: (1) use of benthic foraminifera as bioindicators in reef environments, (2) causes of decline of coral reefs in the Florida Keys, (3) bleaching in reef-dwelling foraminifera, (4) benthic communities and carbonate sedimentology along coral-reef turnon/turnoff gradients, and (5) responses of reef-dwelling foraminifera to arsenic from hydrothermal sources. Aspects of their research are applicable to coral-reef ecology, reef-resource management, global environmental change, protozoology, paleobiology, paleoceanography, carbonate sedimentology, and hydrocarbon exploration.

Relevant to the biota of the Gulf of Mexico, Dr. Hallock Muller has published the following:

Hallock, P. 1999. Symbiont-bearing foraminifera. Pp. 123–139 in B. K. Sen Gupta, ed. Modern Foraminifera. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

Hallock, P., and M. W. Peebles. 1993. Foraminifera with chlorophyte endosymbionts: habitats of six species in the Florida Keys. Marine Micropaleontology 20: 277–292.