How the direct and indirect effects of species interactions cascade to affect community structure, functioning, and stability is a fundamental question in ecology. In temperate kelp forests, species interactions, in conjunction with environmental processes, produce rich spatiotemporal dynamics.
Arguably the most dramatic of these are abrupt shifts in community state,...
Food webs are extraordinarily complex, containing myriad direct interactions and indirect effects. Determining how this network of interactions and effects influences a food web’s qualitative dynamics is a challenging task, especially because data on food web structure and individual interaction strengths is unknown in virtually all real-world ecosystems. The goal...
Fluctuations and spatial heterogeneity of habitat and resources is thought to underlie niche variation in animal populations, with intraspecific differences serving to produce or maintain population-, community-, or ecosystem-level patterns. Individual diet variation, defined as individual variation in food resource use within a population that is consistent over time, is...
Diet variation among individuals within populations is widespread. Often diet differences among individuals are attributable to obvious differences among individuals such as age, sex, or morphology. However, growing evidence suggests that individual diet variation is also common among seemingly identical individuals within populations. This phenomenon has been termed individual diet...
Direct anthropogenic stressors have caused drastic declines in wildlife populations over the past two centuries. In the face of these threats, spillover of infectious disease from domestic animals and livestock into wildlife, and novel interactions between parasites and pathogens within wildlife communities, have further suppressed already vulnerable populations. As management...
Forecasts of the impacts of climate change have traditionally focused on individual species and their phenotypes, phenology, or distribution. However, shifts in species distributions and the resulting reorganization of community composition represent an important violation to the assumption of species acting in isolation. Whereas species may respond individualistically to climate...
The effects of Marine protected areas (MPAs) on adult fish populations depend on the degree of protection provided, which is partly a function of MPA size and the spatial extent of fish movements. The Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve (RRMR) and MPA, located on the south coast of Oregon near Port...
Aspects of the life history and ecology of the intertidal turf-forming
alga Rhodomela larix (Turner) C. Agardh were examined over a two
year period at several sites on the Oregon coast. Rhodomela occurred
over a broad tidal range and exhibited different growth and morphology
characteristics with respect to tidal height....
Craneflies of the genus Lipsothrix inhabit decomposing wood in
streams. The life cycles and ecological relationships of L. nigrilinea
(Doane) and L. fenderi Alexander were investigated to determine how they
exploit and respond to the wood habitat and their role in degradation of
woody debris in western Oregon. Surveys of...
Multiple successional sequences have been observed following disturbance in communities on marine hard substrata. Observations of the turf-forming alga, Iridaea cornucopiae Post. & Rupr. (Gigartinaceae), suggest that I. cornucopiae may assume its dominance by its ability to vegetatively pre-empt space. High limpet densities in the natural community, suggest that I....