Malin L. Pinsky
Affiliated Faculty
Associate Professor
14 College Farm Rd, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 | ENR Room 130
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Full CV | Two Page CV | OceanAdapt

Research Interests

Broadly, my research addresses global change in the ocean. I am particularly interested in the mechanisms that determine population and community responses to global change, the consequences for human society, and the approaches that can foster sustainable management. The ocean is a fascinating environment for testing ecological and evolutionary theory, in part because it has such contrasting physical conditions, geographic patterns, and taxonomic diversity compared to ecosystems on land. This contrast frames much of my thinking on global change questions. My current work investigates climate impacts on coastal communities, patterns of collapse risk across taxa, and the demographic mechanisms underpinning population responses to global change.

Short History

I grew up in Maine tidepooling, hiking, and sailing, then headed inland for an A.B. in Biology from Williams College. I worked for three years, including two years at a salmon conservation non-profit in Portland, OR (the Wild Salmon Center), then went back to school for a Ph.D. in Biology at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Lab with Steve Palumbi. I was a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow at Princeton University for two years with Simon Levin and Jorge Sarmiento before starting at Rutgers.

Teaching Efforts

Undergraduate

11:216:454 Molecular Ecology
16:215:603:01 Ecology and Evolution of Climate Change

Graduate

16:215:554 Molecular Ecology
16:215:603:01 Ecology and Evolution of Climate Change

Select Publications

Pinsky, M. L. and D. Byler*. (2015) Fishing, fast growth, and climate variability increase the risk of collapse. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282: 20151053 doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.1053

McCauley, D. J., M. L. Pinsky, J. A. Estes, S. R. Palumbi, and R. R. Warner (2015) Marine defaunation: the past, present, and future of animal loss in the global ocean. Science 347: 1255641 doi: 10.1126/science.1255641

Pinsky, M. L. and S. R. Palumbi (2014) Meta-analysis reveals lower genetic diversity in overfished populations. Molecular Ecology 23: 29-39 doi: 10.1111/mec.12509

Pinsky, M. L., B. Worm, M. J. Fogarty, J. L. Sarmiento, and S. A. Levin (2013) Marine taxa track local climate velocities. Science 341: 1239-1242 doi: 10.1126/science.1239352

Pinsky, M. L. and M. Fogarty (2012) Lagged social-ecological responses to climate and range shifts in fisheries. Climatic Change 115(3): 883-891 doi:10.1007/s10584-012-0599-x

Pinsky, M. L., O. P. Jensen, D. Ricard, and S. R. Palumbi (2011) Unexpected patterns of fisheries collapse in the world’s oceans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(20): 8317-8322

Pinsky, M. L., H. Montes, Jr., and S. R. Palumbi (2010) Using isolation by distance and effective density to estimate dispersal scales in anemonefish. Evolution 64(9): 2688-2700