Joshua Idjadi, a doctoral student in the Department of Biological Sciences, has been selected to receive the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) research fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

He is among 100 students selected nationwide, based on a rigorous assessment of research proposals. The award offers a stipend and tuition for three years, in addition to expenses for travel and equipment.

Idjadi’s research, which focuses on processes on coral reefs that promote coral species diversity, is aimed at helping resource managers to maintain and restore coral reefs more effectively. Such reefs are experiencing degradation all over the world due to natural and human-induced causes.

“I was overwhelmed when I heard that I received the award,” Idjadi says. “I knew how many accomplished researchers would be applying and how few proposals get funded, so I felt that it was a long shot. The application consists of a complete research proposal, which details the project you would plan to do if you received funding, a curriculum vitae and all your academic records. The application is then reviewed and rated by scientists who work in a related field.”

Idjadi says that corals, although they appear to be stationary, colorful rocks, aggressively attack one another with tentacles and digestive filaments and by overgrowing and shading others as they compete for light and space.

“Despite the fact that coral species differ greatly in their ability to compete, poor competitors coexist alongside strong competitors,” Idjadi says. “My work has shown that the spatial arrangement of corals on the reef, particularly when corals are aggregated, can help reduce the ability of strong competitors to exclude weak ones. This might be one of the many important mechanisms that promote coral diversity.”

Idjadi explains that he has conducted his experiments on French Polynesian reefs because they are relatively diverse and in fairly good shape, factors that allow him to observe the natural interactions of corals on a dense reef. However, he says, the results of his work can be applied wherever corals occur and are in competition with each other, such as in the Hawaiian Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Idjadi earned his bachelor’s degree from Tufts University and his master’s degree from California State University-Northridge. Both degrees were in biology. His UD adviser is Ronald Karlson, professor of biological sciences, whose research focuses on large-scale patterns in coral diversity.

Idjadi, who has studied at UD for four years, received the Best Student Coral Reefs Paper award at the Benthic Ecology Meeting in 2002. He spends his free time shaping fiberglass and surfing on his own surfboards.       

  —Martin Mbugua