Careful analysis and thoughtful synthesis will be necessary for expanding the envelope of
ecological understanding. This work is my attempt at communicating both of these, in relation
to three questions about our understanding of the structure and dynamics of biological diversity.
These questions focus on a) advancing our understanding of...
Most climate change predictions focus on the response of individual species to changing local conditions and ignore species interactions, largely due to the lack of a sound theoretical foundation for how interactions are expected to change with climate and how to incorporate them into climate change models. Much of the...
The multifaceted role of the environment in regulating the structure and dynamics of biological communities has long fascinated ecologists and motivated much debate and research. Now, in a time of accelerated global changes due to human impacts, the need to understand how the environment shapes communities has gained new urgency....
Succession and organization of rocky intertidal zone surfgrass beds
(Phyllospadix scouleri Hook) were examined experimentally at two sites
on the Oregon coast. The interaction of three attributes of the plant
-- high persistence, high preemption, and slow recovery -- strongly
influences the organization of surfgrass beds. Permanent plots indicate
that...
Kelps are large brown algae in the order Laminariales and are foundation species that form the basis of kelp forests. Present across a quarter of the world’s coastlines, kelp forests provide diverse services to coastal communities, as habitat for commercially and culturally important species, as a food source for humans...
Environmental stress can negatively affect the ability of organisms to reproduce. Energetic trade-offs exist in all organisms, and under stress, energy may be allocated away from reproduction and towards physiological defense and repair mechanisms. The rocky intertidal environment is ideal for investigating the influence of environmental stress, as organisms are...
Understanding of gene flow, connectivity, and diversity is critical to predict the stability of key marine species. The Oregon coast of the U.S.A. shows fine-scale levels of geographic variation in environmental stressors such as temperature, pH, and oxygen levels, prompting questions about the potential for local adaptation. In this thesis,...
While community ecologists have traditionally focused on local-scale processes, it has become apparent that a broader perspective, which explores the community-level ramifications of material fluxes within and between ecosystems, is necessary to effectively evaluate bottom-up influences on community structure and dynamics. In this dissertation, I employed ecosystem principles to understand...
As ecologists are being called upon to predict the consequences of human
perturbations to natural communities, an important goal is to understand what factors
drive variability or consistency in nature.
In the rocky intertidal of San Juan Island, Washington, a comparative
experimental approach was used to investigate spatial and temporal...
I studied the feeding behavior of marked individuals of the
carnivorous marine snail Thais melones in a rocky shore habitat of
Pacific Panama. The population of snails consume a variety of
invertebrate species such as bivalves, limpets, and polychaetes.
Individuals exhibited a range of diet breadth, with some
specialized, but...