Robert Kent Trench (August 3, 1940 - April 27, 2021) was an American Biologist who was a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
He moved to the University of California, Los Angeles for his doctoral research, where he focussed on invertebrate zoology in the laboratory of Leonard Muscatine.
Through his research, Trench challenged this mindset and concluded that the symbiont’s attributes are critical to the establishment and maintenance of the symbiotic relationship.
[4] Trench pursued his doctoral degree at the University of California, Los Angeles under the guidance of his advisor, Leonard Muscatine.
Here, Trench focused his dissertation research on the transfer rates and total amounts of photosynthetically fixed carbon translocated to the animal from its symbiont.
Trench demonstrated that even after being engulfed by the sea slug’s digestive cells, the ingested chloroplasts were still functional.
His work showed that the chloroplasts continued to photosynthesize for extended periods of time following engulfment and functioned as “captive” intracellular organelles.
[4] In 1972, Trench moved to Yale University as an Assistant Professor where his research dissertation was mentored by Luigi Provasoli.
From this, Trench, along with his graduate student Dave Schoenberg, showed that isolated cultures were fundamentally different when grown under the same environmental conditions such as nutrient, light, and temperature.
[4] Trench’s lab also showed that these symbionts are sensitive to temperature stress, a crisis we are currently facing known as Coral bleaching.
Additionally, Trench established the functional biological and ecological significance of symbiont diversity to reef-building corals.
Trench worked with his graduate student Roberto Igelsias-Prieto to develop a concept on how host-symbiont combinations partially determine coral physiological responses to environmental pressures.
Their work also explained how corals possessing large biogeographic distributions could occupy a broad range of habitats and depths.
His lab used Aiptasia and Cassiopea as experimental models to study host-symbiont relationships under controlled conditions.
[4] To extend on his interests in symbiotic relationships, Trench studied the mutualism between single-celled flagellates (cyanophora paradoza) and photosynthetic bacteria (cyanocyta korshikoffiana).
From this, he determined that the flagellates rely on the photosynthetic processes of the cyanobacteria making it a mutually obligate relationship.
In 1984 Trench was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II to move to Australia and study the Great Barrier Reef.
[7] He retired from academic science in 2000, Bob’s roots were a melting pot consisting of indigenous Central American, Spanish, African, and Jewish lineages.
This placed the control of the Director of the DBML in the hands of the British Zoology Department who immediately eliminated Bob from contention as they decided a White man was needed for the position.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Iglesias-Prieto, R.; Matta, J. L.; Robins, W. A.; Trench, R. K. (1992-11-01).