Bailey Marquardt
PhD Student
Marine Biology & Ecology
Bailey's research focuses on developing genetic rescue strategies for threatened Caribbean corals through assisted gene flow and conservation breeding. As a Ph.D. student in the Baker Lab, she investigates how crossing corals from environmentally distinct populations can enhance the adaptive potential of Florida reefs in the face of climate change. She is also interested in advancing coral reproductive biology and developing scalable sexual propagation methods that support the production of genetically diverse corals for reef restoration. Her research integrates coral reproductive biology with population genetics, genomics, and transcriptomics to understand how adaptive traits, such as thermal tolerance and resilience, are inherited from parent colonies and expressed in offspring. Ultimately, her work aims to inform restoration strategies that maximize genetic diversity while improving the long-term persistence of Caribbean coral populations.
Before joining the Baker Lab, Bailey received her B.S. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her M.S. in Marine Biology from the Universidade do Algarve, Portugal. During her master's research, she studied the sexual reproduction of gorgonian corals in Portugal, investigated the thermal tolerance of reef-building corals at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and contributed to the development of environmental DNA (eDNA) methods for identifying species contributing to coral spawning slicks in order to support larval-based restoration efforts.
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