Brenden Holland

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT BRENDEN HOLLAND

I\'m broadly trained in Marine and Terrestrial Ecology, I use a variety of approaches in the field and the laboratory to help increase our understanding of the diversity of life. I have a Bachelor\'s degree from UCSD in Biological Science and graduate degrees in Biological Oceanography from Texas A&M University, I have a couple of decades of experience in both marine and terrestrial ecology, evolution and conservation biology. Approaches I use range from application of molecular markers to map distributions of genetic variation in populations of rare island tree snails and marine fisheries species, investigation of the roles played by native species in tropical ecosystems, social behavior and adaptations of invasive species, and phototactic and other behaviors of dangerous oceanic box jellyfish. As a graduate student I worked as a scientific diver accumulating more than 450 dives, and was on the monitoring cruise, where we discovered that the scleractinian corals at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico are reproductively active (see Gittings et al. 1992 under Publications). We showed that these isolated reefs engage in annual synchronous mass spawning, one night per year. I have field and report writing experience conducting Environmental Impact Surveys as a contractor for various branches of the Department of Defense in the Hawaiian Islands, on Guam, Tinian (CNMI) and Pohnpei (FSM). I have also worked extensively in French Polynesia, and have worked as the onboard naturalist on the Aranui. I\'ve led projects involving captive propagation and restoration of rare and endangered island tree snail species, and published a number of studies aimed at molecular phylogenetic and biogeographic reconstruction of evolutionary relationships as well as dispersal and colonization histories for a number of native marine and terrestrial lineages (please see Publications) I have served on and chaired a number of graduate committees, grant and fellowship evaluation committees, and I teach Environmental Biology.