Richard Aronson, Ph.D.

Department Head | Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Florida Tech

  • Melbourne FL

Dr. Aronson's research combines paleontology and ecology to reconstruct the response of marine communities to environmental changes.

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#Expert Research: Stunning New Study Shows Tropical Reefs Grow Faster in Cooler Waters

Coral reefs off the Pacific coast of Panamá may not be able to keep up with projected sea-level rise over the next century. Upwelling of cool waters will provide temporary relief. Photo by Jennifer Hobbs Wills/Florida Tech. For thousands of years, cold waters in tropical upwelling zones have hindered the growth and survival of coral species which thrived in warm seas. Stunning new research from Florida Tech shows that corals living in cooler waters are now building reefs faster than nearby corals living in warmer waters. As climate change continues to heat up the oceans, conditions are now becoming too hot for corals to grow and survive, jeopardizing their ability to continuously build the three-dimensional structures that protect coastlines from storms and provide shelter for marine life. Cooler waters are now helping corals survive the heat stress caused by climate change by lowering the sea temperatures and offering a much-needed reprieve from the heat. The study, “Upwelling, climate change, and the shifting geography of reef development,” published online today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, was led by Victor Rodriguez-Ruano, a Ph.D. candidate at Florida Tech, and his advisor Richard Aronson, Ph.D. The study is part of Rodriguez-Ruano’s doctoral research and was conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the United States Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Researchers used ecological surveys of coral reefs off the Pacific coast of Panamá to show that reefs exposed to strong upwelling events—when deep, cold water rises to the surface—are building the reef structure at a faster rate than reefs that do not receive the stress-relief of cool waters. If you're a reporter looking to know more about this topic, let us help with your coverage. Dr. Aronson is a a department head and professor of marine biology at Florida Tech and a go-to expert on corals, Antarctica and global warming. He is available to speak with media regarding this and related topics. Simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview.

Richard Aronson, Ph.D.

Areas of Expertise

Marine Biology
Coral-Reef Ecology
Ecology
Paleobiology
Antarctica

About

Rich Aronson grew up in Queens, New York, and became interested in marine biology at an early age, collecting shells on Jones Beach, Long Island. He received his A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1979 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1985.

Dr. Aronson's research program combines paleontology and ecology to reconstruct the response of marine communities to environmental changes in deep time. He brings this information to bear in predicting the impacts of climate change on modern biotas and the communities they comprise.

Dr. Aronson's primary focus is on coral reefs and subtidal communities in Antarctica. The plants and animals living at the latitudinal extremes of the tropics and the poles are quite different, of course, but they share a key characteristic: very narrow ranges of environmental tolerance. Because tropical and polar seas have very little in the way of seasonal temperature variation, most marine species in both zones are adapted to those narrow ranges, making them highly vulnerable to climatic warming. Indeed, the ecological impacts of climate change are being seen earliest and most clearly in the tropics and at the poles.

In addition to research and teaching, Dr. Aronson is active in outreach. He visits K-12 classes regularly and works with journalists on stories about our changing planet. Dr. Aronson's lab is active in producing short videos on climate change and other environmental issues created by undergraduate and graduate students at Florida Tech.

Media Assets

Media Appearances

No northern escape route for Florida's coral reefs

ScienceDaily  

2021-06-22

Co-author Richard Aronson, a marine scientist at Florida Tech and Toth's doctoral advisor, said, "All of us on the Eastern Seaboard know the jet stream is wobbling more and dipping southward more frequently, bringing us bad winter storms and bitterly cold weather. The corals along Florida's east coast will be hammered from the north by freezes on the anvil of rising temperatures in the south. They won't be able to shift locations from the Florida Keys to the east coast."

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Florida Tech Faculty Among Top 2 Percent of Scientists Worldwide

Florida Tech News  

2021-01-11

Ten faculty members currently or previously associated with Florida Tech have been named to a new list from Stanford University that compiles the top 2 percent of scientists worldwide. Inclusion on the list is based on standardized academic citations, co-authorships and related composite metrics that gauge career-long impact.

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Storm-Surfing Parasites Spread Widely

Scientific American  

2020-11-01

“The kicker here for me is climate change,” says Richard Aronson, a marine biologist at the Florida Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the study. If hurricanes increase in intensity as predicted, Aronson says, the study suggests there may be more genetic homogenization among some marine animals that would otherwise remain in isolated populations. This would make peripheral populations less likely to cleave off and create new species, he adds.

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Education

Harvard University

Ph.D.

Biology

1985

Dartmouth College

A.B.

Biological Sciences

1979

Harvard University

A.M.

1980

Social

Selected Articles

Twenty years of change in benthic communities across the Belizean Barrier Reef

PloS one

2022

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Upwelling and the persistence of coral-reef frameworks in the eastern tropical Pacific

Ecological Monographs

2021

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Climate and the latitudinal limits of subtropical reef development

Scientific Reports

2021

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Languages

  • French