Kaustuv Roy

About

Professor Kaustuv Roy leads a research group at the University of California San Diego focused on understanding the processes that generate and maintain large-scale spatial gradients in biodiversity, how these gradients are impacted by climate change and anthropogenic effects such as human harvesting, and the ecological and evolutionary consequences of these changes. His lab employs an interdisciplinary approach, studying coastal marine invertebrates and their associated microbial taxa, or microbiomes, to address these questions. A central theme of the research is the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), a global pattern of increasing species richness from the poles to the tropics, which remains incompletely understood despite numerous hypotheses. Roy's work includes testing existing hypotheses and developing new models, such as the "Out of the Tropics" model that integrates evolutionary processes with biogeographical dynamics to provide insights into the origin and maintenance of the LDG. The lab also investigates molluscan microbiomes, recognizing microbes as the most diverse and abundant organisms that influence physiology, metabolism, ecological systems, and biogeochemical processes. Roy's group quantifies how marine mollusk microbiomes vary across spatial and environmental gradients, their functional consequences, evolutionary patterns, and responses to anthropogenic impacts like coastal eutrophication and climate change. Additionally, the lab studies the biotic…

Research topics

• Biology
• Ecology
• Computer Science
• Mineralogy
• Oceanography
• Computational biology
• Geology
• Genetics
• Evolutionary biology
• Environmental science

Selected publications

• Defining and quantifying the core microbiome: Challenges and prospects

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 586 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  The term "core microbiome" has become widely used in microbial ecology over the last decade. Broadly, the core microbiome refers to any set of microbial taxa, or the genomic and functional attributes associated with those taxa, that are characteristic of a host or environment of interest. Most commonly, core microbiomes are measured as the microbial taxa shared among two or more samples from a particular host or environment. Despite the popularity of this term and its growing use, there is littl…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Diversity, distribution and intrinsic extinction vulnerability of exploited marine bivalves

  Nature Communications · 2023-08-15 · 31 citations

  articleOpen access

  Marine bivalves are important components of ecosystems and exploited by humans for food across the world, but the intrinsic vulnerability of exploited bivalve species to global changes is poorly known. Here, we expand the list of shallow-marine bivalves known to be exploited worldwide, with 720 exploited bivalve species added beyond the 81 in the United Nations FAO Production Database, and investigate their diversity, distribution and extinction vulnerability using a metric based on ecological t…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Decade‐scale stability and change in a marine bivalve microbiome

  Molecular Ecology · 2021 · 23 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Predicting how populations and communities of organisms will respond to anthropogenic change is of paramount concern in ecology today. For communities of microorganisms, however, these predictions remain challenging, primarily due to data limitations. Information about long-term dynamics of host-associated microbial communities, in particular, is lacking. In this study, we use well-preserved and freshly collected samples of soft tissue from a marine bivalve host, Donax gouldii, at a single site…

  PublisherDOI

• Shell mineralogy of a foundational marine species, <i>Mytilus californianus</i> , over half a century in a changing ocean

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 17 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  , under 60 y of ocean warming and acidification. Using historical data as a baseline and a resampling of present-day populations, we document a substantial increase in shell calcite and decrease in aragonite. These results indicate that ocean pH and saturation state, not temperature or salinity, play a strong role in mediating the shell mineralogy of this species and reveal long-term changes in this trait under ocean acidification.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do host‐associated microbes show a contrarian latitudinal diversity gradient? Insights from <i>Mytilus californianus</i>, an intertidal foundation host

  Journal of Biogeography · 2021-08-28 · 15 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Aim The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is one of the most pervasive large‐scale trends in biodiversity. However, whether microbial taxa also conform to this pattern remains poorly known. This study uses the gill and shell‐surface microbiomes of the marine bivalve Mytilus californianus to test whether the diversity of host‐associated microbial communities declines with increasing latitude, as predicted by the LDG. Location Northeastern Pacific coast, ranging from Sitka, AK to La Jo…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David Jablonski

  University of Chicago

  89 shared

• M Zevenbergen

  University of Notre Dame

  64 shared

• Dmitri E. Nikonov

  Intel (United States)

  64 shared

• Wiliot Ltd

  Intel (United Kingdom)

  64 shared

• Kenji Endo

  64 shared

• Paolo Crovetti

  Polytechnic University of Turin

  64 shared

• Yi Shao

  Oklahoma City University

  64 shared

• A Yehezkely

  University of Notre Dame

  64 shared

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