Joe Pollock
Senior Reef Strategy Lead, Hawai'i and Palmyra Programs
North Carolina
DR. JOSEPH POLLOCK Dr. Joe Pollock is the Senior Reef Strategy Lead for The Nature Conservancy’s Hawai'i and Palmyra Programs. © Courtesy of Joseph Pollock
Areas of Expertise
Coral reef ecology, ecosystem services, climate change adaptation, coastal habitat restoration
Biography
As Senior Reef Strategy Lead, Dr. Joe Pollock spearheads strategic initiatives to protect, monitor and restore coral reefs throughout the Hawaiian Islands, Palmyra Atoll and other reef sites globally. Throughout his career, Joe has collaborated deeply with scientists, managers, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members in Australia, the Caribbean and more than a dozen countries around the globe to develop the knowledge, tools and public will to protect coral reefs and the people who depend upon them.
Joe received master’s and PhD degrees in marine science from James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. He was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Penn State University, where he co-led the Global Coral Microbiome Project and is currently an adjunct assistant professor. He also founded Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders in Marine Science, an award-winning program supporting science career pathways for Indigenous students.
On the Attack Against Climate Change - The New York Times
Back from the Brink: The Global Effort to Save Coral from Climate Change - The Guardian
Spawning an Intervention - bioGraphic
The Incredible Ways Scientists Are Rebuilding Our Coral Reefs - Mind Body Green
View Joe's Google Scholar Profile for a full list of publications.
Pollock FJ, Morris PJ, Willis BL, Bourne DG (2010) Detection and quantification of the coral pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus by real-time PCR with TaqMan fluorescent probes. Appl Environ Microbiol 76:5282-5286.
Pollock FJ, Wilson B, Johnson WR, Morris PJ, Willis BL, Bourne DG (2010) Phylogeny of the coral pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus. Environmental microbiology reports 2:172-178.
Pollock FJ, Morris PJ, Willis BL, Bourne DG (2011) The urgent need for robust coral disease diagnostics. PLoS pathogens 7:e1002183.
Cohen Y, Pollock FJ, Rosenberg E, Bourne DG (2013) Phage therapy treatment of the coral pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus. Microbiologyopen 2:64-74.
Pollock F, Katz S, Bourne D, Willis B (2013) Cymo melanodactylus crabs slow progression of white syndrome lesions on corals. Coral Reefs 32:43-48.
Katz SM, Pollock FJ, Bourne DG, Willis BL (2014) Crown-of-thorns starfish predation and physical injuries promote brown band disease on corals. Coral Reefs:1-12.
Pollock FJ (2014) Understanding the drivers of white syndrome coral diseases on Indo-Pacific reefs. James Cook University.
Pollock FJ, Lamb JB, Field SN, Heron SF, Schaffelke B, Shedrawi G, Bourne DG, Willis BL (2014) Sediment and turbidity associated with offshore dredging increase coral disease prevalence on nearby reefs. PLOS one 9:e102498.
Pollock FJ, Wood-Charlson EM, van Oppen MJ, Bourne DG, Willis BL, Weynberg KD (2014) Abundance and morphology of virus-like particles associated with the coral Acropora hyacinthus differ between healthy and white syndrome-infected states. Marine Ecology Progress Series 510:39-43.
Bourne DG, Ainsworth T, Pollock FJ, Willis B (2015) Towards a better understanding of white syndromes and their causes on Indo-Pacific coral reefs. Coral Reefs 34:233-242.
Pollock FJ, Krediet CJ, Garren M, Stocker R, Winn K, Wilson B, Huete-Stauffer C, Willis BL, Bourne DG (2015) Visualization of coral host–pathogen interactions using a stable GFP-labeled Vibrio coralliilyticus strain. Coral Reefs 34:655-662.
Wada N, Pollock FJ, Willis BL, Ainsworth T, Mano N, Bourne DG (2016) In situ visualization of bacterial populations in coral tissues: pitfalls and solutions. PeerJ 4:e2424.
Page C, Field S, Pollock FJ, Lamb J, Shedrawi G, Wilson S (2017) Assessing coral health and disease from digital photographs and in situ surveys. Environmental monitoring and assessment 189:18.
Pizarro V, Rodríguez SC, López-Victoria M, Zapata FA, Zea S, Galindo-Martínez CT, Iglesias-Prieto R, Pollock J, Medina M (2017) Unraveling the structure and composition of Varadero Reef, an improbable and imperiled coral reef in the Colombian Caribbean. PeerJ 5:e4119.
Pollock FJ, Katz SM, van de Water JA, Davies SW, Hein M, Torda G, Matz MV, Beltran VH, Buerger P, Puill-Stephan E (2017) Coral larvae for restoration and research: a large-scale method for rearing Acropora millepora larvae, inducing settlement, and establishing symbiosis. PeerJ 5:e3732.
Pollock FJ, Wada N, Torda G, Willis BL, Bourne DG (2017) White syndrome-affected corals have a distinct microbiome at disease lesion fronts. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 83:e02799-02716.
Thompson LR, Sanders JG, McDonald D, Amir A, Ladau J, Locey KJ, Prill RJ, Tripathi A, Gibbons SM, Ackermann G (2017) A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity. Nature 551:457.
Mansour JS, Pollock FJ, Díaz-Almeyda E, Iglesias-Prieto R, Medina M (2018) Intra-and interspecific variation and phenotypic plasticity in thylakoid membrane properties across two Symbiodinium clades. Coral Reefs 37:841-850.
Pollock FJ, McMinds R, Smith S, Bourne DG, Willis BL, Medina M, Thurber RV, Zaneveld JR (2018) Coral-associated bacteria demonstrate phylosymbiosis and cophylogeny. Nature communications 9:4921.
Raina J-B, Eme L, Pollock FJ, Spang A, Archibald JM, Williams TA (2018) Symbiosis in the microbial world: from ecology to genome evolution. Biology open 7:bio032524.
Roitman S, Pollock FJ, Medina M (2018) Coral microbiomes as bioindicators of reef health. In: Population Genomics. Springer.
Wada N, Ishimochi M, Matsui T, Pollock FJ, Tang S-L, Ainsworth TD, Willis BL, Mano N, Bourne DG (2019) Characterization of coral-associated microbial aggregates (CAMAs) within tissues of the coral Acropora hyacinthus. bioRxiv:576488.