My work often focuses on microbes that are on living surfaces - for sessile (stationary) organisms, they are the first part of an organism that contacts the environment and/or other organisms. They play a role in organismal health by thwarting disease, causing disease, as well as are responsible for chemical cycling, both within organisms as well as in the environment.

I combine community ecology, microbial ecology and evolutionary ecology to ask questions about species interactions and have recently started to move towards understanding how host-microbial systems respond to stress to inform conservation