Tal Ben-Horin PhD
Bio
Tal Ben-Horin is an Assistant Professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University. He completed his graduate work (Master of Environmental Science and Management and PhD) at the University of California Santa Barbara and a Bachelor of Science at the University of Vermont. He leads the Shellfish Pathology Laboratory at NC State where his research group explores pathology and disease impacts associated with global aquaculture expansion.
SHORT DESCRIPTION OF INTERESTS:
My research explores how marine aquaculture’s global expansion has transformed marine ecosystems and how these transformations impact disease-causing pathogens, particularly in the context of environmental change. Ongoing projects in my lab are investigating how selecting for disease resistance in open-water shellfish aquaculture can influence disease impacts to coastal ecosystems, how triploid oysters respond to multiple environmental stressors, and how shellfisheries can serve as both a sentinel and vector for human exposure to algae toxins. All my work is inherently interdisciplinary and I look forward to establishing new collaborations in environmental and ocean modeling, marine microbial ecology, fisheries science, and economics.
https://shellfishpathology.wordpress.ncsu.edu/
Publications
- A suite of ddPCR assays targeting microbial pathogens for improved management of shellfish aquaculture , APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY (2025)
- Broodstock genetics, more than ploidy alone, explains oyster resilience at farm sites impacted by sudden unusual mortality syndrome , AQUACULTURE (2025)
- Farmed oyster mortality follows consistent Vibrio community reorganization , (2025)
- A newly discovered trematode parasite infecting the bay scallop, Argopecten irradians , AQUACULTURE (2024)
- Coculture with Eastern oysters is unlikely to reduce OsHV-1 impacts to farmed Pacific oysters: A modelling approach , AQUACULTURE REPORTS (2024)
- Shifting power: data democracy in engineering solutions , ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS (2024)
- MarineEpi: A GUI-based Matlab toolbox to simulate marine pathogen transmission , SOFTWAREX (2023)
- Pathology associated with summer oyster mortality in North Carolina , AQUACULTURE REPORTS (2023)
- Predicting the Growth of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in Oysters under Varying Ambient Temperature , MICROORGANISMS (2023)
- Understanding Crassostrea virginica tolerance of Perkinsus marinus through global gene expression analysis , Frontiers in Genetics (2023)