Dr Gareth Williams
Reader / Director of Impact and Engagement
Affiliations
Links
- https://www.bangor.ac.uk/oceansciences/staff/gareth-williams
Department Home Page - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EfvZsI8AAAAJ&hl=en
Google Scholar Page
Contact info
Room: 303 Craig Mair Phone: +44(0)1248 382588
E-mail: g.j.williams@bangor.ac.uk Twitter
I graduated in Marine Biology (University of Liverpool) in 2004 and completed an MSc in Marine Environmental Protection (Bangor University) in 2006. I began a PhD in Marine Biology (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) in 2007 in coral disease ecology, combining macroecology, experimental ecology, and histopathology to identify disease baselines and drivers of disease prevalence on Pacific coral reefs. A focus study site of mine was Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited atoll in the Northern Line Islands. After obtaining my PhD in 2011, I was awarded a post-doctoral scholarship at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego (UCSD) where I continued to work on the macroecology of Pacific coral reefs. This role at Scripps transitioned into an Assistant Project Scientist position within the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation in 2013. I left Scripps in late 2015 to return to the UK and take up my full-time role within the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University.
I am a marine ecologist specialising in coral reef ecology. My work focuses on the interaction of organisms with their environment, often taking a macroecological approach. I am particularly interested in how human activities and natural biophysical gradients interact to drive community patterns across multiple trophic levels (microbes to sharks) and scales (individual reefs to entire ocean basins). Much of my work incorporates remote coral reefs free from direct human impact, providing key replication at the unimpacted end of an intact-to-degraded ecosystem spectrum. By surveying across extensive geographical areas we address broad questions pertaining to: 1. the human, climatic and oceanographic drivers of coral reef ecosystem structure and function, 2. climate change impacts to coral reef ecosystems, 3. the spatial ecology of coral reefs, and 4. disease dynamics on coral reefs.
Research Areas
- Published
Modelling the linkage between coral assemblage structure and pattern of environmental forcing
Sandin, S. A., Eynaud, Y., Williams, G. J., Edwards, C. & McNamara, D., 14 Oct 2020, In: Royal Society Open Science. 7, 10, 200565.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Co-occurrence of herbivorous fish functional groups correlates with enhanced coral reef benthic state
Sheppard, C., Williams, G. J., Exton, D. & Keith, S., Mar 2023, In: Global Ecology and Biogeography. 32, 3, p. 435-449 15 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Influence of upwelling on coral reef benthic communities: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Spring, D. & Williams, G. J., 29 Mar 2023, In: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 290, 1995, p. 20230023 1 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Disease dynamics of Porites bleaching with tissue loss: prevalence, virulence, transmission, and environmental drivers
Sudek, M., Williams, G. J., Runyon, C., Aeby, G. S. & Davy, S. K., 10 Feb 2015, In: Diseases of Aquatic Organisms. 113, 1, p. 59-68Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Metagenomic covariation along densely sampled environmental gradients in the Red Sea
Thompson, L. R., Williams, G., Haroon, M. F., Shibl, A., Larsen, P., Shorenstein, J., Knight, R. & Stingl, U., Jan 2017, In: ISME Journal. 11, p. 138-151Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Red Sea SAR11 and Prochlorococcus Single-cell Genomes Reflect Globally Distributed Pangenomes
Thompson, L. R., Haroon, M. F., Shibl, A. A., Cahill, M. J., Ngugi, D. K., Williams, G. J., Morton, J. T., Knight, R., Goodwin, K. D. & Stingl, U., Jul 2019, In: Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 85, 13, e00369-19.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Precision and cost-effectiveness of bioindicators to estimate nutrient regimes on coral reefs
Vaughan, E. J., Wynn, P. M., Wilson, S. K., Williams, G. J., Barker, P. A. & Graham, N. A. J., Sept 2021, In: Marine Pollution Bulletin. 170, 112606.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Nitrogen enrichment in macroalgae following mass coral mortality
Vaughan, E., Wilson, S., Howlett, S., Parravicini, V., Williams, G. J. & Graham, N. A. J., 12 Apr 2021, In: Coral Reefs.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Regional reef fish assemblage maps provide baseline biogeography for tropicalization monitoring
Walker, B., Becker, D., Williams, G. J., Kilfoyle, A., Smith, S. & Kozachuk, A., 3 Apr 2024, In: Scientific Reports. 14, 1, p. 7893 7893.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
- Published
Advancing the integration of spatial data to map human and natural drivers on coral reefs
Wedding, L., Lecky, J., Gove, J., Walecka, H., Donovan, M., Williams, G., Jouffray, J-B., Crowder, L., Erickson, A., Falinski, K., Friedlander, A., Kappel, C., Kittinger, J., McCoy, K., Norstrom, A., Nystrom, M., Oleson, K., Stamoulis, K., White, C. & Selkoe, K., 1 Mar 2018, In: PLoS ONE. :e0189792.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review