Steven Vollmer

Education

• B.S., Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
• M.S., California State University, Northridge, CA
• Ph.D., Harvard University, Boston, MA

Bio:

Dr. Steve Vollmer serves as Director of the School of Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sustainability and is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. Steve is an evolutionary and ecological genomicist specializing in reef corals and how they adapt and resist disease infection and thermal bleaching. He joined Florida Atlantic University in 2025. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, did his postdoctoral fellowship research at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and spent 18 years at Northeastern University as a professor of Marine and Environmental Science, and during his tenure at Northeastern University served as the Director of the Bioinformatics program, and Associate Director of their Marine Science Center. Steve is a National Academy of Science Kavli Fellow. 

Research Interests

• Evolutionary and Ecological Genomics
• Coral Immunity and host-pathogen interactions
• Marine Conservation Biology
• Environmental Sustainability 

 

Research Description

I am an evolutionary biologist specializing in the genomics on non-model, marine organisms with a focus on reef-building corals. I primarily study coral disease resistance, immunology, and coral-pathogen interactions at the molecular and organismal level. I use field and tank experiments and genomics to unravel the complex interactions between the coral animal host, its algal symbionts and its numerous microbes. Recent examples of research in the lab include a genome-wide association study of staghorn corals disease that identified 10 genes that predict their disease resistance to White Band Disease (WBD), and machine learning analyses of the bacterial communities on hundreds of diseased and healthy corals that identified the top WBD pathogen candidates. 

 

Selected Publications

1. Despard, B.A., Selwyn, J.D., Shupp, A.N. and Vollmer, S.V.(2025), A Network Approach to White Band Disease Challenged Staghorn Coral Acropora cervicornis microRNAs and Their Targets. Ecol Evol, 15: e71351. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.71351
2. Selwyn, J. D., Despard, B. A., Galvan-Dubois, K. A., Trytten, E. C., & Vollmer, S. V.(2025). Antibiotic pretreatment inhibits white band disease infection by suppressing the bacterial pathobiome. Frontiers in Marine Science, 12, 1491476. 
3. Selwyn, JD, Despard, BA, Vollmer, MV, Trytten EC, Vollmer, SV(2024) Machine learning based identification of putative coral pathogens in endangered Caribbean staghorn coral. Environmental Microbiology 26 (9) e16700 https://doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.16700
4. Vollmer, S. V., Selwyn, J. D., Despard, B. A., & Roesel, C. L. (2023). Genomic signatures of disease resistance in endangered staghorn corals. Science, 381(6665), 1451-1454. DOI: 10.1126/science.adi3601
5. Selwyn, J. D., & Vollmer, S. V.(2023). Whole genome assembly and annotation of the endangered Caribbean coral Acropora cervicornis. G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, Volume 13, Issue 12, December 2023, jkad232, https://doi.org/10.1093/g3journal/jkad232
6. Glynn, V. M., Vollmer, S. V., Kline, D. I., & Barrett, R. D. (2023). Environmental and geographical factors structure cauliflower coral's algal symbioses across the Indo‐Pacific. Journal of Biogeography, 50(4), 669-684. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14560
7. Spadafore, R, Fura, R, Precht, WF, & *Vollmer, SV(2021). Multi-variate analyses of coral mortality from the 2014–2015 stony coral tissue loss disease outbreak off Miami-Dade County, Florida. Frontiers in Marine Science. 8:723998. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2021.723998
8. Dunphy CM, Vollmer SV, Gouhier TC. Host-microbial systems as glass cannons: Explaining microbiome stability in corals exposed to extrinsic perturbations. Journal Animal Ecology2021 May;90(5):1044-1057. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.13466. Epub 2021 Mar 21. PMID: 33666231.