Alexander M Kerr
Associate Professor of Marine Biology
BA University of Guam
MSc University of Guam
MPhil Yale
PhD Yale
Research Interests
An organism's potential to adapt to a novel environment depends in part upon its history of evolving features needed in previous environs. Replicate radiations of organisms into an identical ecosystem, say - coral reefs, permit one to test such questions as: How has the history of these organisms prior to their expansion in the tropics constrained or facilitated their diversification onto reefs? How has the evolution of ecological innovation influenced the tropics as a source or sink for global diversity? We address these questions using comparative phylogenetic methods. Using supertree techniques, we have also recently produced the most comprehensive phylogeny of scleractinian corals and the first class-level phylogeny of Holothuroidea, the sea cucumbers, from nucleotide sequences, morphological characters and fossil first occurrances. These are some pretty big trees, with over 350 and 200 species, respectively. Using these estimates and comparative methods, we are testing hypotheses with a previously unavailable statistical power about how invertebrates have diversified into a derived environment, scleractinian coral reefs.
A more recent applied project has been to test the effectiveness of intact coastal ecosystems in ameliorating damage from tsunami.
Selected Publications
Kerr, A. M., A. H. Baird and T. P. Hughes. 2010. Correlated evolution of sex and reproductive mode in corals (Anthozoa: Scleractinia). Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 277: In the press.
Raymundo, L. J., A. R. Halford, A. P. Maypa and A. M. Kerr. 2009. Functionally diverse reef-fish communities ameliorate coral disease. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. 106: 17067-17070.
Konow, N., D. R. Bellwood, P. C. Wainright and A. M. Kerr. 2008. Novel jaw joints promote trophic diversity in coral reef fishes. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 93: 545-555.
Kerr, A. M. and A. H. Baird. 2007. Natural barriers to natural disasters. BioScience 57: 102-103.
Kerr, A. M. 2005. Molecular and morphological supertree of stony corals (Anthozoa: Scleractinia) using matrix representation parsimony. Biological Reviews 80: 543-558.
Kerr, A.M., D. Janies, R. M. Clouse, Y. Samyn, J. Kuszak and J. Kim. 2005. Molecular phylogeny of coral-reef sea cucumbers (Holothuroidea: Aspidochirotida) based on 16S mt rDNA sequence. Marine Biotechnology 7: 53-60.
Connell, J. H., T. P. Hughes, C. C. Wallace, J. E. Tanner, K. E. Harms and A. M. Kerr. 2004. A 35-year study of competition, species composition and diversity of corals. Ecological Monographs 74: 179-210.
Contact
Dr. Alexander M. Kerr
Associate Professor of Marine Biology
Marine Laboratory
University of Guam
Mangilao GU 96923 USA
Marine Lab., Room 109
Tel: 1 671 735 2182/75/76
Fax: 1 671 734 6767
uogmarinelab@gmail.com