Kelly Speare, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech University, where she leads the Speare Lab. Her research investigates how climate change and local environmental stressors, including nutrient pollution and fishing, influence the resilience of coral reef communities. She combines field experiments, long-term ecological monitoring, and data analysis to understand how coral reefs respond to disturbance and recover. Her work in Moorea, French Polynesia, focuses on understanding why coral bleaching and mortality vary across reefs and identifying the environmental and biological factors that shape coral susceptibility to marine heatwaves.
