Joel Elliott
Professor, Biology
Joel Elliott’s research interests are in the ecology and evolution of aquatic organisms. He addresses questions at the community, population, organismal, cellular, and molecular levels of organization. Many of his studies have examined predator-prey and symbiotic interactions among marine organisms. His recent work has involved studying the effects of high hydrogen sulfide levels (caused in part by historic sawmills) on marine life (e.g., eelgrass, marine invertebrates, bacterial communities) in Puget Sound. He is also involved in local environmental studies projects, such as the effects of introduced species on marine communities, sea star wasting disease, and microbial symbionts of eelgrass. Examples of recent publications are “Differences in relative abundance and size structure of the sea stars Pisaster ochraceus and Evasterias troschelii among habitat types in Puget Sound, Washington, USA,” (Marine Biology, Rogers and Elliott 2013) and “Ochre star mortality during the 2014 wasting disease epizootic: role of population size structure and temperature” (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Eisenlord et al. 2016). Elliott teaches courses on diversity of life, general ecology, invertebrate zoology, marine biology, and thinking about biodiversity.