Chelsea A. Korpanty

Dr. Patricia Kelley, an esteemed evolutionary paleoecologist and educator, has used transformative learning and mentoring experiences to empower her mentees to explore diverse opportunities and evolve their unique pathways in STEM. As a pioneer in historical predator-prey interactions, Dr. Kelley has overcome numerous barriers throughout her career and exemplified the value of paving one's own way in STEM through scholarly pursuits and academic exploration. While doing so, she has inspired her mentees to embrace scientific inquiry, pursue scholarly goals, reach personal achievements, and contribute to the broader scientific community with their unique interests, passions, and individuality. By modeling professionalism and resilience, Dr. Kelley has supported and promoted the career evolution of her mentees, instilling in them the skills and mindset necessary to thrive in STEM. Her mentorship has cultivated a network of academically diverse professionals who have become experts in their respective fields. Although mentoring encompasses many facets, our focus is on the advisor/student relationship in higher education and research. Former mentees were surveyed about their unique experiences collaborating with Dr. Kelley, and common trends were extracted to characterize Dr. Kelly's mentorship and influence on their careers. These experiences convey how Dr. Kelley's mentorship encouraged her students to develop their own unique evolutionary paleoecological toolkits and complex thinking skills that they have applied to their research and professional goals. As her students have progressed in their careers, many have harnessed their positive experiences with Dr. Kelley to persevere in academia, overcoming their individual barriers to establish themselves as STEM professionals. Some have even taken the role of mentor to guide the next generation of paleontologists. In doing so, they carry forward some of the mentoring approaches of Dr. Kelley, thus preserving her profound influence on the evolution of their careers.

Framework-forming cold-water corals (CWC) are ecosystem engineers, building and supporting deep-sea biodiversity hotspots worldwide. While spatial patterns and drivers of species distributions have been evaluated on modern CWC reefs, little is known how reef biodiversity is affected by habitat variability over geologic time - the scale at which CWC reefs initiate, thrive, and decline. Using three CWC reef sediment cores as species diversity archives, we investigated temporal trends of molluscan diversity over the last nearly equal 13 kyr from a CWC mound in the Alboran Sea to evaluate (a) how spatial patterns of CWC-associated diversity are recorded in reef sediments, (b) the potential of CWC reefs as biodiversity hotspots when coral growth is flourishing and when it is not, and (c) which palaeoceanographic conditions or habitat characteristics may be driving biodiversity. Our results reveal that at the ecosystem scale differences in molluscan assemblages are more pronounced between CWC habitats than between intervals of CWC framework (flourishing growth) and non-framework (negligible CWC growth). However, within habitats, significant differences emerge between these assemblages: lower molluscan diversity is associated with flourishing CWC growth. Significant negative correlations between molluscan diversity and palaeoceanographic conditions conducive for CWC growth (high food availability, strong hydrodynamics, optimal bottom-water temperatures and salinities, high aggradation rates indicative of flourishing CWC growth) also imply that CWC growth and relevant environmental conditions contribute to reduced molluscan diversity. Altogether, these patterns detected over geologic time resemble those observed spatially across living CWC reefs today - where competition with resources, particularly food, prevents high reef biodiversity near dense living CWC colonies. Our study demonstrates that (1) ecological paradigms of living CWC are preserved in their sedimentary record, (2) flourishing CWC growth and conditions promoting CWC growth drive habitat-scale diversity patterns, and (3) a geological approach can be applied to study long-term diversity dynamics in CWC ecosystems.