Hypotheses concerning relative costs of inbreeding and
outbreeding were evaluated for the harpacticoid copepod Tigriopus
californicus, which inhabits high intertidal tidepools. Field
studies indicate high variation in biotic and abiotic parameters
among pools. These findings coupled with previous information
about very low dispersal rates and local adaptations to individual
pools...
Interface habitats are considered valuable natural systems, tightly linked to adjacent habitats through the flow of matter and energy. However, there is limited research on mechanisms of connectivity such as movement of organisms and particulate matter and ways in which anthropogenic disturbance to interface habitats may affect immediate and adjacent...
The influence of the physical environment on organisms has long been a subject of ecological research. But, the complex drivers of environmental variation, and the multiple scales at which this can occur, make studying this topic a difficult challenge. In rocky intertidal habitats, oceanographic- and climate-scale variability influence benthic communities...
This study investigated whether a device commonly used to measure settlement of mussel larvae for ecological studies, the Tuffy™, functions uniformly whether placed in a bed of filamentous algae or on bare rock. During the summers of 2004 and 2005, the number of mussel larvae settling on Tuffys in patches...
Most wild animals are concurrently infected with multiple parasite species for most of their lives. These parasite species assemble into rich and diverse communities, with parasites using host tissues for growth and reproduction as well as evolving strategies to evade the host immune system. The net effect of these ecological...
Like other species interactions in ecological systems, host-pathogen interactions are influenced by environmental factors, landscape characteristics and the broader community context. My thesis explores the potential influences of food-web interactions (Chapter 2), climate change (Chapter 3), landscape structure and host movement patterns (Chapter 4), and the combined influences of local...
Two of the most powerful ways in which humans have altered ecosystems are by increasing productivity and changing the densities of important consumers. The bottom-up effects of productivity and the top-down effects of consumers have been identified as primary determinants of biological diversity, though the links between them remain unclear....
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2.3 Algal species richness (a-c) and percent cover (d-f) throughout
the duration of the