Texas Tech Researcher Probes Resilience of Coral Reefs

by Doug Hensley, Texas Tech
October 7, 2026

Kelly Speare, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences at Texas Tech University, has been researching coral reefs for more than a decade. Her latest findings indicate these important underwater ecosystems respond to external pressures in surprisingly different and resilient ways.

Speare’s paper outlining the findings was published in Ecology. For four years, Speare has been observing how coral reefs off the coast of French Polynesia have fared in the face of threats from fishing pressure, which can impact key reef processes, including herbivory and predation.

“I’m really interested in these processes,” Speare said, “because humans are strongly influencing them, and there are a lot of hypotheses about how these changes may be driving degradation of coral reefs at large scales.”

Speare and her team took a closer look at these impacts through experiments that manipulated fishes’ access to the reefs by setting up large exclosures, measuring roughly one meter by one meter. This allowed them to manipulate the size and numbers of consumers – herbivores that eat algae and corallivores that eat corals – impacting the reef. Manipulative experimental studies such as this one allow researchers to isolate certain factors to test their influence on the reef environment.

Keep reading: https://www.ttu.edu/now/posts/2026/10/texas-tech-researcher-probes-resilience-of-coral-reefs.php

Read the Ecology paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.70507