Susan Williams, Ph.D.

The Williams Lab

Albert Carranza Staff Research Associate

My personal interests include all aspects of the physiology, morphology, ecology and evolution of aquatic organisms, particularly in rocky intertidal systems. Marine littoral zones exert a unique set of challenges on their inhabitants as they are subjected to fluctuations in temperature, salinity and desiccation. I am particularly fascinated by organisms' adaptations to living in such extremes and the methodologies used to study them.

Although my educational background is in marine invertebrate ecology, I worked in the field of environmental chemistry for twelve years. During this time, I acquired a great deal of experience in environmental water quality monitoring and analytical chemistry.

As a member of the Williams lab, I have been able to apply this experience in Dr Susan Williams' multi-disciplinary approach to marine ecology research. Our work has involved diverse research projects ranging from contamination in California salt marshes to nitrogen fixation rates in coral reefs. I have worked on developing spectroradiometry methods for detecting contaminant-induced stress in salt marsh plants and automated techniques to measure stored nitrate in algal tissues.

Our current research project bring together a number of field and lab methods as we attempt to identify physical and biological factors influencing marine algal diversity on rocky shores, and how this diversity, in turn, affects ecosystem function.

I earned a master's degree from Sonoma State University in 1996. For my thesis work, I conducted and unprecedented survey of interstitial meiofauna along the Sonoma Coast (just a few miles north of BML). My focus was on the taxonomic, temporal and spatial distribution of marine tardigrades. A partial summary of this work appears in the recent edition of Light's manual.

PUBLICATIONS

Pollock, L.W. and A. Carranza. 2007. Tardigrada, pp. 293-296. In: The Light & Smith manual: intertidal invertebrates from central and northern California to Oregon. 4th ed. J.T. Carlton, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Williams, S.L., A. Carranza, J. Kunzelman, K. Kuivila and S. Data. 2009. Effects of the Herbicide Diuron on Cordgrass (Spartina foliosa) Reflectance and Photosynthetic Parameters. Estuaries and Coasts: Volume 32, Issue 1 , pp.146-157.

The Williams Lab