Dr. David I. Kline is a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. David grew up in Southern California and received his BS from Carleton College in Minnesota and his PhD from SIO. He did postdoctoral fellowships at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and at the University of Queensland, Australia. He was a research biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD from 2011-2019. He has led or co-authored over 50 high impact peer-reviewed publications with over 4800 citations and an h-index of 31.

David is a coral reef ecologist who studies the fate of coral reefs in a rapidly changing world. He studies the ecology of corals and reef communities, and how reefs will change under the plethora of stresses they face, both local (e.g. pollution and disease) and global (warming and ocean acidification). He regularly collaborates with engineers, computer scientists, chemists, and to physiologists to find new and ingenious ways to protect the future of coral reefs by developing new and innovative conservation technologies.  

These conservation technologies include an underwater time machine (FOCE) that uses sensor arrays and computer controlled dosing pumps to produce future predicted ocean conditions (pH, temperature and pollution) on the reef and determine how corals and coral reef communities will be impacted. Another project, called the Computer Vision Coral Ecology project, that he helps lead developed a machine learning system that uses facial recognition technologies to automate the analysis of coral reef survey photographs and videos (CoralNet), so that data can be obtained from surveying imagery up to 10,000x faster.  Additionally, he leads an NSF funded project with Martin Tresguerres titled “Cellular physiological mechanisms for coral calcification and photosynthesis: extending lab-based models to the field” in which they are using immunological techniques to study coral responses to changing environmental conditions, in combination with controlled aquarium studies, field transplant experiments and reef biochemistry studies. In this research they are developing a mechanistic understanding of corals response to stress from the cellular to the ecosystem level and hope to provide new solutions for coral reef conservation and management.

Article

• Linsmayer, L. B., Noel, S. K., Leray, Matthieu, Wangpraseurt, D., Hassibi, C., Kline, D. I., and Tresguerres, M. 2024. "Effects of bleaching on oxygen dynamics and energy metabolism of two Caribbean coral species." Science of The Total Environment, 919 170753. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170753. 2024
• Hamilton, Trevor J., Tresguerres, Martin, Kwan, Garfield T., Szaskiewicz, Joshua, Franczak, Brian, Cyronak, Tyler, Andersson, Andreas J., and Kline, David I. 2023. "Effects of ocean acidification on dopamine-mediated behavioral responses of a coral reef damselfish." Science of The Total Environment, 877. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162860. 2023
• Glynn, Victoria M., Vollmer, Steven V., Kline, David I., and Barrett, Rowan D. H. 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. 2023
• Pezner, Ariel K., Courtney, Travis A., Barkley, Hannah C., Chou, Wen-Chen, Chu, Hui-Chuan, Clements, Samantha M., Cyronak, Tyler, DeGrandpre, Michael D., Kekuewa, Samuel A. H., Kline, David I., Liang, Yi-Bei, Martz, Todd R., Mitarai, Satoshi, Page, Heather N., Rintoul, Max S., Smith, Jennifer E., Soong, Keryea, Takeshita, Yuichiro, Tresguerres, Martin, Wei, Yi, Yates, Kimberly K., and Andersson, Andreas J. 2023. "Increasing hypoxia on global coral reefs under ocean warming." Nature Climate Change, 13, (4) 403– . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01619-2. 2023
• de Pablo, Luis X., Lefcheck, Jonathan S., Harper, Leah, Paul, Valerie J., Jones, Scott, Whippo, Ross, Seemann, Janina, Kline, David I., and Duffy, J. Emmett. 2021. "A doubling of stony coral cover on shallow forereefs at Carrie Bow Cay, Belize from 2014 to 2019." Scientific Reports, 11, (1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-96799-2. 2021
• Stewart, Heather A., Kline, David I., Chapman, Lauren J., and Altieri, Andrew H. 2021. "Caribbean mangrove forests act as coral refugia by reducing light stress and increasing coral richness." Ecosphere, 12, (3). https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3413. 2021
• Bollati, Elena, D'Angelo, Cecilia, Kline, David I., Mitchell, B. Greg, and Wiedenmann, Jorg. 2021. "Development of a multi-excitation fluorescence (MEF) imaging method to improve the information content of benthic coral reef surveys." Coral Reefs, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-021-02101-1. 2021
• Grottoli, A. G., Toonen, R. J., van Woesik, R., Thurber, R. Vega, Warner, M. E., McLachlan, R. H., Price, J. T., Bahr, K. D., Baums, I. B., Castillo, K. D., Coffroth, M. A., Cunning, R., Dobson, K. L., Donahue, M. J., Hench, J. L., Iglesias-Prieto, R., Kemp, D. W., Kenkel, C. D., Kline, D. I., Kuffner, I. B., Matthews, J. L., Mayfield, A. B., Padilla-Gamino, J. L., Palumbi, S., Voolstra, C. R. et al. 2021. "Increasing comparability among coral bleaching experiments." Ecological Applications, https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2262. 2021
• Leray, Matthieu, Wilkins, Laetitia G. E., Apprill, Amy, Bik, Holly M., Clever, Friederike, Connolly, Sean R., De Leon, Marina E., Duffy, J. Emmett, Ezzat, Leila, Gignoux-Wolfsohn, Sarah, Herre, Edward Allen, Kaye, Jonathan Z., Kline, David I., Kueneman, Jordan G., McCormick, Melissa K., McMillan, W. Owen, O'Dea, Aaron, Pereira, Tiago J., Petersen, Jillian M., Petticord, Daniel F., Torchin, Mark E., Vega Thurber, Rebecca, Videvall, Elin, Wcislo, William T., Yuen, Benedict et al. 2021. "Natural experiments and long-term monitoring are critical to understand and predict marine host-microbe ecology and evolution." Plos Biology, 19, (8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001322. 2021
• Stark, Jonathan S., Peltzer, Edward T., Kline, David I., Queirós, Ana M., Cox, T. E., Headley, Kent, Barry, James, Gazeau, Frédéric, Runcie, John W., Widdicombe, Stephen, Milnes, Mark, Roden, Nicholas P., Black, James, Whiteside, Steven, Johnstone, Glenn, Ingels, Jeroen, Shaw, Emily, Bodrossy, Levente, Gaitan-Espitia, Juan, Kirkwood, William, and Gattuso, JeanPierre. 2019. "Free Ocean CO2 Enrichment (FOCE) experiments: Scientific and technical recommendations for future in situ ocean acidification projects." Progress in Oceanography, 172 89–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2019.01.006. 2019
• Kline, David I., Teneva, Lida, Okamoto, Daniel K., Schneider, Kenneth, Caldeira, Ken, Miard, Thomas, Chai, Aaron, Marker, Malcolm, Dunbar, Robert B., Mitchell, B. G., Dove, Sophie, and Hoegh-Guldberg, Ove. 2019. "Living coral tissue slows skeletal dissolution related to ocean acidification." Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3, (10) 1438–1444. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0988-x. 2019
• Gormley, Kate, McLellan, Faron, McCabe, Christopher, Hinton, Claire, Ferris, Joseph, Kline, David, Scott, Beth, Gormley, Kate, McLellan, Faron, McCabe, Christopher, Hinton, Claire, Ferris, Joseph, Kline, David I., and Scott, Beth E. 2018. "Automated Image Analysis of Offshore Infrastructure Marine Biofouling." Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 6, (1). https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse6010002. 2018
• Hamilton, Trevor J., Kline, David I., and Tresguerres, Martin. 2018. "Shoaling behaviour is differentially altered by ethanol and dopamine D1 receptor modulators in tropical marine forage fish." Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 75, (7) 999–1004. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2018-0084. 2018
• Du, Niu, Gholami, Pardis, Kline, David I., DuPont, Christopher L., Dickson, Andrew G., Mendola, Dominick, Martz, Todd, Allen, Andrew E., and Mitchell, B. G. 2018. "Simultaneous quantum yield measurements of carbon uptake and oxygen evolution in microalgal cultures." PloS One, 13, (6). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199125. 2018
• Cyronak, Tyler, Andersson, Andreas J., Langdon, Chris, Albright, Rebecca, Bates, Nicholas R., Caldeira, Ken, Carlton, Renee, Corredor, Jorge E., Dunbar, Rob B., Enochs, Ian, Erez, Jonathan, Eyre, Bradley D., Gattuso, Jean-Pierre, Gledhill, Dwight, Kayanne, Hajime, Kline, David I., Koweek, David A., Lantz, Coulson, Lazar, Boaz, Manzello, Derek, McMahon, Ashly, Meléndez, Melissa, Page, Heather N., Santos, Isaac R., Schulz, Kai G. et al. 2018. "Taking the metabolic pulse of the world's coral reefs." PloS One, 13, (1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190872. 2018
• Neal, Benjamin Paul, Khen, Adi, Treibitz, Tali, Beijbom, Oscar, O'Connor, Grace, Coffroth, Mary Alice, Knowlton, Nancy, Kriegman, David, Mitchell, B. G., and Kline, David I. 2017. "Caribbean massive corals not recovering from repeated thermal stress events during 2005-2013." Ecology and Evolution, 7, (5) 1339–1353. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2706. 2017
• Hamilton, Trevor J., Tresguerres, Martin, and Kline, David I. 2017. "Dopamine D1 receptor activation leads to object recognition memory in a coral reef fish." Biology Letters, 13, (7). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0183. 2017
• Neal, Benjamin P., Lin, Tsung-Han, Winter, Rivah N., Treibitz, Tali, Beijbom, Oscar, Kriegman, David, Kline, David I., and Mitchell, B. G. 2015. "Methods and measurement variance for field estimations of coral colony planar area using underwater photographs and semi-automated image segmentation." Environmental monitoring and assessment, 187, (8) 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-4690-4. 2015
• Treibitz, Tali, Neal, Benjamin P., Kline, David I., Beijbom, Oscar, Roberts, Paul L. D., Mitchell, B. G., and Kriegman, David. 2015. "Wide Field-of-View Fluorescence Imaging of Coral Reefs." Scientific Reports, 5 7694. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep07694. 2015
• Nash, M. C., Opdyke, B. N., Troitzsch, U., Russell, B. D., Adey, Walter H., Kato, A., Diaz-Pulido, G., Brent, C., Gardner, M., Prichard, J., and Kline, D. I. 2013. "Dolomite-rich coralline algae in reefs resist dissolution in acidified conditions." Nature Climate Change, (3) 268–272. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1760. 2013
• Neal, B. P., Condit, C., Liu, G., dos Santos, Sergio, Kahru, M., Mitchell, B. G., and Kline, D. I. 2013. "When depth is no refuge: cumulative thermal stress increases with depth in Bocas del Toro, Panama." Coral Reefs, 33, (1) 193–205. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-013-1081-6. 2013
• Kline, David I. and Vollmer, Steven V. 2011. "White Band Disease (type I) of Endangered Caribbean Acroporid Corals is Caused by Pathogenic Bacteria." Scientific Reports, 1, (7) 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00007. 2011
• Eakin, C. M., Morgan, Jessica A., Heron, Scott F., Smith, Tyler B., Liu, Gang, Alvarez-Filip, Lorenzo, Baca, Bart, Bartels, Erich, Bastidas, Carolina, Bouchon, Claude, Brandt, Marilyn, Bruckner, Andrew W., Bunkley-Williams, Lucy, Cameron, Andrew, Causey, Billy D., Chiappone, Mark, Christensen, Tyler R. L., Crabbe, M. J., Day, Owen, de, la Guardia, Diaz-Pulido, Guillermo, DiResta, Daniel, Gil-Agudelo, Diego, Gilliam, David S., Ginsburg, Robert N. et al. 2010. "Caribbean corals in crisis: Record thermal stress, bleaching, and mortality in 2005." PLoS ONE, 5, (11) e13969. 2010

Chapter

• Tresguerres, Martin, Barott, Katie L., Barron, Megan E., Deheyn, Dimitri D., Kline, David I., and Linsmayer, Lauren B. 2017. "Cell Biology of Reef-Building Corals: Ion Transport, Acid/Base Regulation, and Energy Metabolism." In Acid-Base Balance and Nitrogen Excretion in Invertebrates: Mechanisms and Strategies in Various Invertebrate Groups with Considerations of Challenges Caused by Ocean Acidification. Weihrauch, Dirk and O'Donnell, Michael, editors. 193–218. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. 2017