Anya Brown is investigating microbes’ critical role in coral reefs
“So the clue was, ‘This temperate coral undergoes quiescence in the winter. Another word for this is … ?’” Anya Brown has spent most of her adult life around coral reef systems. Her brother, meanwhile, has cultivated a career as a writer on the American quiz show, “Jeopardy!”
He once consulted her for a marine science question idea, which aired on season 39 (episode 8924) of the series. “The word was ‘hibernation,’” Brown reveals, and it had formed the basis of her post-doctoral research assessing how corals go dormant, and what happens to their microbial communities when they do. She’s devoted her career to investigating how microbes influence ecology and the evolution of macroscopic species.
“So, I go from the teeny tiny, to the large,” says Brown, a marine biologist, ecologist, National Geographic Explorer and assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.