Kelsey Johnson-Sapp
Ph.D. Candidate
Marine Biology & Ecology
Kelsey is a fifth-year PhD candidate with a research focus in leveraging natural environmental gradients to identify thermally tolerant corals and use them to restore vulnerable reef populations. Throughout her research trajectory, she has employed cutting-edge strategies to reliably quantify thermal tolerance, specifically through the lens of how translocation can modulate bleaching outcomes. Kelsey has also honed techniques in 3D photogrammetry to analyze the intersection between source-and-outplant- environments, growth, and survivorship to identify the advantages and consequences of coral translocation. Kelsey is currently leading an experiment for X-REEFS involving the inoculation of Caribbean recruits with natural and artificially heat-evolved Pacific symbionts to explore the flexibility of symbioses and their effects on thermal tolerance.
