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Staff Profile

Professor John Bythell

Professor of Coral Reef Biology, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences

  • Email: john.bythell@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Natural and Environmental Sciences
    4.64 Ridley Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle Upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Background 

Coral reef ecology is at the forefront of national and international media attention because of the serious threats to these ecosystems from global climate change, disease and over-exploitation. As long ago as 1998, a global sea surface temperature event is estimated to have killed 17% of the corals of the world. Regional mass bleaching events are now common occurrences, often followed by disease outbreaks. My research has addressed two main foci in the study of coral health and disease: 1) the development of a culture-independent molecular microbial ecology approach to the study of emergent diseases in reef corals, and 2) The cellular and molecular responses of reef corals to infection and environmental stress, most recently in relation to the selection of stress-tolerant phenotypes as part of the Coralassist project (Coralassist) and latterly the CoralAdapt project. As genomic information becomes available for corals and related lower invertebrates, post-genomic and proteomic approaches to stress and disease tolerance have also become possible.


I am currently in the process of flexi-retirement and working one day a week (20% FTE).


Google Scholar page: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=6pqp1LEAAAAJ&hl=en

Research

Research Interests

Large-scale coral bleaching episodes were unknown prior to 1979 but have become more frequent with repeated mass coral bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017. These events are linked to environmental stress, particularly temperature increases, and in addition to the local and regional loss of biodiversity, may represent the first case of the functional collapse of an ecosystem due to global climate change. Concurrent with these mass bleaching events, there has been widespread concern over the emergence of coral diseases over the past three decades. Reef core data from Belize indicates that the mass mortality of two of the dominant coral species in the Caribbean is unprecedented in at least the last 3-4000 years, which suggests a link to anthropogenic activities. Unfortunately, identification and characterisation of the causal agents of most coral diseases remains unresolved or poorly characterised, with traditional microbiological approaches to determining disease causation being misleading in these typically polymicrobial diseases. My research group addresses these areas by applying molecular approaches to understanding microbial ecology of corals and coral reefs. Other research interests focus on the host responses to environmental stress and host-microbe interactions.

Teaching


Module Leader:

  • SPG8013 Environmental Impact Assessment (Flexible Learning)
Publications