Food Web Ecology Lab: November 2008

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.

Monday, November 17, 2008

A recent publication

Coll, M., H.K. Lotze, and T.N. Romanuk. 2008.
Structural degradation in Mediterranean Sea food webs: testing ecological hypotheses using stochastic and mass-balance modelling.
Ecosystems

Recruiting NSERC USRA's for Summer 2009

I am currently looking for 1 or 2 NSERC USRA's to conduct research in my lab this summer on the community composition of rock pool meiofaunal communities from Nova Scotia, Churchill, and Bermuda. USRA's will learn techniques related to species identification of a wide variety of meiofaunal invertebrates, field techniques, and data-analysis. You will also get to be involved in a wide range of graduate student research projects looking at extinction dynamics, and the effects of climate change on food-web structure.