Aquatic Food Web Ecology Lab, Dalhousie University

Research in the Aquatic Food Web Ecology Lab based at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, focuses on the consequences of biodiversity loss to the functioning and stability of aquatic food webs. All of our work is done in a food web context, which means that its not just the numbers of species that we are interested in, but also the structure of the food webs in which those species are embedded. Most of our work is done in aquatic microcosms, small container ecosystems in which we can assemble food webs and then subject them to various types of disturbance regimes . We also use mathematical models to run "in silico" experiments, otherwise known as computer simulations, to study problems that are too complex or just not possible to conduct in natural systems.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Congradulations to the honors students of 2008!

Species invasions, trophic cascades, metabolic theory, and stability OH MY! great work everyone ! Its been a year of firsts....

Kevin (aka Tom) Hargadon, in his stellar thesis "Investigating the impact of top predator removal on lower trophic level abundance and ecosystem function in temperate and tropical aquatic microcosms" showed that removal of top predators results causes trophic cascades in rock pool food-webs...






Andrew McMillan, in his thesis "Trends in facilitation of successful invasion by previously established invaders" delved into world of species invasions and showed that direct positive interactions are more likley in terrestrial systems while indirect positive interactions are more likley in aquatic systems....










Angela Young, in her thesis "The Effects of Environmental Stress on the Relationship between Diversity and Stability in Temperate Rock Pools" showed that when more functional groups are present populations are more stable...






Matthew Beck, in his thesis "The effects of temperature and nutrient availability on the respiration rate of invertebrate rock pool ecosystems" showed that cold adapted species respond more strongly to change in environmental temperature than tropical species...

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