All organisms live on a continuum of stress, whereby internal and external changes in the environment enact processes to cope. These coping strategies cost energy for survival. Dr. Martell is extremely curious about the hierarchy of this process, that is, how dose, timing and repeated stress events act in concert to modulate the organismal response and ultimately, the health state. In addition, the relative position of an organism on the stress continuum and the energetic costs of stress response mechanisms (e.g., the processes of DNA methylation or histone modification) govern organismal survival. Dr. Martell is interested in identifying the potential mechanisms, beneficial doses, and response curves of environmental memory in corals in response to thermal stress.