Kelly Speare, Ph.D.

Education & Positions

• B.S., Biology; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2013)
• Ph.D., Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology; University of California, Santa Barbara (2021)
• Postdoctoral Scholar, Marine Science Institute; University of California, Santa Barbara (2022)
• NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning; Arizona State University (2022-2025)
• Postdoctoral Scholar, Marine Science Institute; University of California, Santa Barbara (2025)

Research Interests

I study how global change and local stressors alter the dynamics and resilience of ecological communities. My field research focuses on coral reefs, some of the world’s ecosystems most altered by climate change and local stressors. I also use cross-ecosystem data synthesis to investigate the consequences of altered biotic interactions across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Some of the questions my research answers are:

• How do consumers determine community assembly and dissimilarity? What are the cascading consequences of the loss of consumers?
• What are the mechanisms that make ecological communities resilient? How are these mechanisms altered by global change?
• What are the causes and consequences of variable effects of marine heatwaves on foundation organisms?

I answer these questions through hypothesis-driven field experiments, analyses of time-series data, and cross-ecosystem data syntheses.

Publications

See Google Scholar for a complete list of publications.