Michael T. Connelly, Ph.D.
About me
Hello, and welcome! My name is Mike Connelly, and I am a marine biologist that studies cnidarian genomics to better understand the evolutionary origins of the immune system, and also to help support coral reef conservation and restoration efforts.
I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health. My primary focus is on the assembly and functional annotation of the Podocoryna carnea refence genome. This small freshwater hydrozoan has a transparent body and rapid life cycle that allows studies of fundamental processes such regeneration, cell differentiation, and organismal development.
In my personal time, I am also a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C., working with collaborators at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panamá to study the evolution and microbial symbiosis ecology of Pocillopora corals in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP).
Research interests
I am a molecular marine biologist that is broadly interested in how microbial symbioses affect the ecology, evolution and diversification of marine invertebrates. I am especially interested in how these host-microbe interactions affect the ecology, evolution, and biodiversity of tropical coral reefs and deep-sea coral ecosystems.
In particular, I am fascinated by scleractinian corals in the genus Pocillopora because of their ecological importance, large geographic distribution, and complex microbial symbioses. My current research is using genomics and morphometrics to resolve the species-level systematics of this important coral genus, and then will use metagenomics to assess signatures of host-microbe coevolution among Pocillopora corals and their associated algal and bacterial symbiont communities. To learn more, please visit the Projects page.
