![\"Hanny](\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2019\/06\/Hanny_Defense.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Thursday was a special day in our lab. Hanny Rivera successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis titled:\u00a0Genetic connectivity, Adaptation, and Phenotypic Plasticity of Corals and Anemones under Thermal Stress<\/em>.<\/p>\n Much of Hanny\u2019s work focused on characterizing genetic structure within populations of the massive reef-building coral\u00a0Porites lobata<\/em>. In these studies, Hanny collaborated most closely with Anne Cohen and Iliana Baums. To do this work, she trekked across the globe, sampling corals across Palau and the Phoenix Islands. In Palau, she searched for a genetic basis for the high thermal tolerance in the unique \u201cRock Island\u201d reefs. Hanny has recently described these studies in\u00a0a popular article in the Oceanus Magazine<\/a>. Within the Central Pacific, Hanny conducted additional genetic analyses in an effort to understand how corals in the Phoenix Islands survive strong interannual temperature changes associated with the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).<\/p>\n (pictured from left to right: Hannah Stillman, David Brinkley, Hanny Rivera, Ann Tarrant)<\/p><\/div>\n Hanny has also sought to gain insight into thermal tolerance in our favorite \u201clab rat\u201d, the sea anemone\u00a0Nematostella vectensis.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Nematostella\u00a0<\/em>tolerates a huge range of temperatures, with large variation on diel, seasonal, and latitudinal scales. We know that some of variation in thermal tolerance among\u00a0Nematostella\u00a0<\/em>anemones (and most other animals) is genetically controlled (adaptation), and some of it is based on the environment they have experienced (acclimation, or phenotypic plasticity). Hanny conducted an elegant series of experiments showing that newly born anemones inherit thermal tolerance from their parents, both through genetic effects and non-genetic parental effects. These parental effects allow anemone parents to produce offspring that are well-suited for rapidly changing local environments.<\/p>\n![\"(pictured](\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2019\/06\/Lab_summer2018-e1527097455704-300x187-300x187.jpg\")