Food Web Ecology Lab

GlobalWeb2011

2012-01-04T13:51:00.001-08:00

Melbourne 2011...re-wiring life... one... link... at... a... time...
From left to right: front row: Ross Thompson; middle row: Neo Martinez, Tamara Romanuk, Jennifer Dunne, Bob Hall, Daniel Stouffer, Jason Tylianakis; back row: Roger Kitching, Ulrich Brose, Sally Hladyz, Heidi Rantala

A baby and the Cushman AWARD!

2012-01-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

Jen Gaultier had her 2nd baby and won the Cushman Award which will be providing funds for helping us decipher food-web pathways in Atlantic salt-marshes...you go girl!

Honors Students 2011/2012

2012-01-04T12:52:00.000-08:00

Trina Jolene "Response of placozoans to light"

Jess Hinch "Effects of increased temperature on salt marsh food-webs"

Alyssa Cirtwill "Latitudinal gradients in food-web structure"

Molly Whalen-Browne "Effect of increased temperature on the relation between diversity and stability in zooplankton"

Deja Gibson "Response predictability in ecosystem function following anthropogenic disturbances"

Charlotte Underwood "Food web structure of Atlantic salt-marshes"

Body Ecology

2012-01-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

Marina Ritchie successfully defended her thesis titled "Structure and Function of the Human Microbiome"
Abstract: Humans harbour a diverse suite of microorganisms in and on their bodies. These microorganisms collectively amount to 10 times more cells than the cells in the human body, and their combined genomes have more than 100 times more genes than the human genome does. Despite our understanding of the composition, diversity, and abundance of microorganisms of the human body, it is surprising how little we know about the structure and function of the human microbiome. Here, I use network structure to describe interactions among human-associated microbiota and the human body by exploring differences in structure of human microbiomes across five regions of the body and the robustness of these networks to perturbations. My results show that positive interactions among microbiota are extremely important in structuring microbiome networks and those structural aspects of microbiome networks play a major role in their response to perturbations.

Come here big high trophic level fishy......

2011-06-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

Romanuk, TN., A. Hayward, and J.A. Hutchings. 2010.
Trophic level scales positively with body size in fishes.
Global Ecology and Biogeography

New meta-analysis: diversity-stability relations

2011-06-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Experimental design and the outcome and interpretation of diversity–stability relations
Oikos, Volume 120, Issue 3, pages 399–408, March 2011 by Veronik Campbell, Grace Murphy,and Tamara N. Romanuk

The land of OZ

2011-06-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Tenure and promotion to Associate Professor (me!), Ph.D. status (Mather Carscallen) and a trip to Melbourne for GlobalWeb (organized by Dr. Ross Thompson) oh my!

Ecological Modelling Conference at Lake Garda

2011-06-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

Network scientists sure know where to hold a conference. Just got back from 7th ECEM (European Conference on Ecological Modelling) which was held in Riva del Garda, Italy, from 30 May to 2 June 2011. Many thanks to Ferenc Jordan for organizing the conference and to Mike Fowler for the blog kudos on my talk (Devious topological strategies and stabilty in complex networks). The conference would not have been the same if Jurek Kolasa, Amrei Binzer, and Andrew Davies hadn't been there. Awesome science-schmooze.

...and they're off!

2010-09-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Connie Tuck "SCALING UP TO FOOD WEBS: EFFECTS OF TEMPERATURE ON STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION ALONG A LATITUDINAL GRADIENT" and Veronik Campbell "DYNAMICS OF SPECIES EXTINCTION AND RECOVERY IN MULTI-TROPHIC AQUATIC SYSTEMS" successfully defended their M.Sc. theses! Both received stellar reviews and though we are all sad to see them leave we are looking forward to see where they go.

Visualizing and Understanding Interdependence in Nature

2010-07-04T08:51:00.001-07:00

ASLO/NABS in Santa Fe

2010-06-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Getting a bunch of limnologists and aquatic ecologists together in the desert? Yes please! In the photo (left to right): Neo Martinez, Tamara Romanuk, Richard Vogt, Lars Rudolph, Connie Tuck, Veronik Campbell on a well deserved afternoon off overlooking Santa Fe. Thanks ASLO?NABS and in particular to Alan Covich who organized our great interactive session

"Network Approaches to Understanding Complex Aquatic Ecosystem Dynamics"

Connie giving her first 'international presentation'.

Talks and kudos at the 2010 Lett Conference

2010-05-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

Congrats are definitely in order for M.Sc. student Veronik Campbell who captured the best talk prize at the master's level at the 2010 Lett Symposium, a conference organized by graduate biology students at Dalhousie for her talk "Dynamics of populations on the edge of extinction".She, along with Constance Tuck, will also be presenting at the 2010 CSEE conference in Laval.Connie's talk "Robustness of Ecological Communities to Environmental Warming" also received very high praise and will also be presented at CSEE this year.

Heida!

2010-05-05T07:36:00.001-07:00

I don't know if we are more excited about eating Spätzle or learning to code the biodynamic model in C++ but either way we are very happy to be hosting Amrei Binzer, a visiting grad student from Uli Brose's lab in Germany this month. We are deep into species invasions simulations and thinking about lots of fun things like adding facilitation to the niche model. Thanks for loaning Amrei to us Uli!

Interested in learning more about our research?

2010-05-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

Want to science-schmooze with us this summer?
We are heading out to a number of conferences....

5^th Annual CSEE meeting
May 9-12, 2010, Québec

Joint Meeting with ASLO & NABS
June 6-11, 2010, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Devious strategies and disturbance

2010-05-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

How do ecological communities respond to increasing disturbance? A recent paper published by us in PlosOne suggests that as the severity of a disturbance increases, functional groups begin to respond differently.....although the importance of having high functional group diversity to maintaining stability is conserved across all levels of environmental stress.

Romanuk TN, Vogt RJ, Young A, Tuck C, Carscallen MW (2010) Maintenance of Positive Diversity-Stability Relations along a Gradient of Environmental Stress. PLoS ONE 5(4): e10378. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010378

Related papers:

Romanuk, T.N., R.J. Vogt, and J. Kolasa. 2009.
Ecological realism and mechanisms by which diversity begets stability.
Oikos 118:819-828.

Romanuk, T.N., B. Beisner, N.D. Martinez, and J. Kolasa. 2006.
Non-omnivorous generality promotes population stability.
Biology Letters 2:374-377.

Romanuk, T.N., R.J. Vogt, and J. Kolasa. 2006.
Eutrophication weakens the stabilizing effect of diversity on community and population variability.
Oikos 114:291-302.

Vogt, R., T.N. Romanuk, and J. Kolasa. 2006.
Species richness-variability relationships in multi-trophic aquatic microcosms.
Oikos 113:55-66.

Romanuk, T.N., and J. Kolasa. 2004.
Population variability is lower in diverse rock pools when the obscuring effects of local processes are removed.
Ecoscience 11:455-462.

Romanuk, T.N., and J. Kolasa. 2002.
Environmental variability alters the relationship between species richness and community variability in natural rock pool microcosms.
Ecoscience 9:55-62.

Rocking it out at BioBall 2010

2010-04-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

Veronik, Marina, Catherine, Connie and I rocking it out at BioBall 2010....

New MSC student: Grace Lotz

2010-04-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

She's been managing our lives (and our lab) for a while now and has been hanging around the lab even longer (I was Grace's departmental advisor for her honors thesis on the feeding ecology of grey whales back in 08/09) - this coming September she joins us as a MSc student. Welcome Grace!

baby salmon need trees!

2010-04-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

Next time you are driving the "Sea to Sky" highway up to Whistler take a moment to think of the salmon fry and the foreshore development. Chum salmon fry NEED trees!

Romanuk, T.N. and C.D. Levings. 2010.
"Reciprocal Subsidies and Food Web Pathways Leading to Chum Salmon Fry in a Temperate Marine-Terrestrial Ecotone". PlosOne.

Also check out: Romanuk, T.N. and C.D. Levings. 2006. Relationships between fish and supralittoral vegetation in nearshore marine habitats. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 16:115-132.

Romanuk, T.N., and C.D. Levings. 2005. Stable isotope analysis of trophic position and terrestrial vs marine carbon sources for juvenile Pacific salmonids in nearshore marine habitats. Fisheries Management and Ecology 12:113-121.

Romanuk, T.N., and C.D. Levings. 2003. Associations between arthropods and supralittoral vegetation: dependence of terrestrial and aquatic taxa on vegetation. Environmental Entomology 32:1343-1353.

Joined the PlosOne editorial team as an academic editor!

2010-03-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of open access publishing and in particular, the Plos journals. To support the trend I have just joined the PlosOne team as an Academic Editor!

Japan!

2010-03-12T13:51:00.000-08:00

Just got back from a conference in Sendai, Japan: "Ecosystem Management Applying to Ecosystem Adaptability Science: Robustness and stability of organisims and ecosystems". This conference was just incredible - 25 speakers, 5 days, great science, and good friends! Here is a shot of Kevin McCann and I taking a nature walk on one of our afternoons off. I would like to thank Hiroko and all the conference organizers for inviting me. One of the best conferences I can remember! (The other dude is Macaca fuscata - a trip to Japan is nothing without a side-trip to see the snow monkeys!

Honors students at the Cameron Conference

2010-02-18T11:36:00.001-08:00

Kristen Vandenburg, Karla Armsworthy, Jennifer Malcolm, Vanessa Brisson, and Cashelle Farley presenting their research at the annual Cameron Conference for honors students.

Mediterranean Is Scary Laboratory of Ocean Futures

2010-01-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

Press In Wired Science

“It’s difficult to know exactly what’s going to happen elsewhere, but the principles can be extrapolated,” said Marta Call, a Dalhousie University marine biologist who has modeled the interactions of Mediterranean species. In a paper published last year in Ecosystems, she and her colleagues described Mediterranean food webs as “in an advanced state of degradation.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/mediterranean-degradation/#ixzz0cLBT4twl

“Structural Degradation in Mediterranean Sea Food Webs: Testing Ecological Hypotheses Using Stochastic and Mass-Balance Modelling.” By Marta Coll, Heike K. Lotze, and Tamara N. Romanuk. Ecosystems, Vol. 11 No. 6, Sept. 2008.

Mather Carscallen Joins the FWL

2010-01-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

Mather Carscallen has been working with us for nearly three years now and this January formally joins us as an M.Sc student. He is working on polar food webs and the potential consequences of climate change on food web structure in the Arctic and Antarctic. Welcome Mather!

What to do when you get invited to give a talk?

2009-12-17T11:36:00.001-08:00

Take the lab on a road trip of course. Tamara, Connie, Veronik, Catherine, and Marina celebrating the end of a term in New Brunswick.

Kayla Hamelin at the USRA poster session

2009-12-17T08:37:00.000-08:00

"The Tangled Web: Who eats whom in the Nova Scotia rock pools" - by far the coolest poster at the session:)

Congrats Dr. Berreville

2009-12-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

This week at the food web lab has been pretty exciting. Olivier Berreville defended his PHD thesis "Modelling the Structure and Seasonal Evolution of Planktonic Food Webs
in Arctic Polynyas" and passed with ease. Congrats Olivier - we all look forward to you joining the lab as our new Postdoctoral Associate!

I am a cool scientist!

2009-11-11T04:46:00.000-08:00

Check out my interview at "Dive Into Your Imagination"...
Thanks Annie!

New Honors Students 2009/2010

2009-10-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

The lab is busting at the seams! Karla Armsworthy, Jennifer Malcolm, Vanessa Brisson, Kristen Vandenburg and Cashelle Farley are doing their honors work in the food web lab this year.

New Graduate Students

2009-10-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

Two new graduate students have joined the food web lab this year. Marina Ritchie did her undergraduate work at Dal as is going to be working on the human microbiome project. Catherine Sutherland comes to us from U of C and will be working on something webby. Welcome to both!

Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution 2009 Meeting

2009-08-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

Yours truly co-chaired the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution Meeting this year at Dalhousie (along with Dr. Sina Adl, and a heap of amazing volunteers, whom I would like to thank for all their amazing heroics). For details of this great meeting (which was also held in conjunction with the Genetics Society of Canada) check out the meeting report in Biology Letters.

Experimental Photography II

2009-08-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

Experimental Photography

2009-08-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Upcoming Talks

2009-01-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

February 21-24th, 2010, at Ecosystem Management applying to ecosystem adaptability science: I. Robustness and stability of organisms and ecosystems” in Sendai, Japan.
March 26, 2010. Saint Marys University, Halifax, NS (Host: Jeremy Lundholm)
April 6th, 2010 Guelph (Host: Kevin McCann)
Past Talks
December 4th, 2009, University of New Brunswick
February 16th, University of Potsdam, Berlin, Germany "Species Invasions in Complex Ecological Networks" Hosts: Dr. Neo Martinez and Dr. Ursula Gaedke
February 23rd, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany "Species Invasions in Complex Ecological Networks" Host: Dr. Ulrich Brose
February 25th, University of Sheffield, England "Species Invasions in Complex Ecological Networks" Host: Dr. Owen Petchey
March 30th, PIMS Mathematical Biology Seminar Series, University of Alberta "Species Invasions in Complex Ecological Networks" Host: Dr. Mark Lewis

Predicting invasion success in complex ecological networks

2009-01-06T11:30:00.000-08:00

In a special issue on "Food Webs"
This paper was ranked the 33rd most read article in June 2009 in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B
BY...

* Tamara N. Romanuk,
* Yun Zhou,
* Ulrich Brose,
* Eric L. Berlow,
* Richard J. Williams,
* and Neo D. Martinez

Predicting invasion success in complex ecological networks. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B June 27, 2009 364:1743-1754; doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0286

A recent publication

2008-11-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-07-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

New Graduate Students!

2008-07-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

Constance Tuck and Veronik Campbell are starting their masters programs with me at the foodweb lab this September. Constance (or Connie) was a 4th year honors student in my lab back in 2006/2007 and also did a special topics project with me in Fall 2007. Connie will be looking at how temperature variability affects food web structure and stability.

CAPTION: Tamara, Connie, Veronik, and April at Prospect Point, Nova Scotia

Veronik came to out to visit from McGill University this past Spring and decided to join the Foodweb lab. We think it was because of the amazing trip we took out to our rock pools at Prospect Point, about 40min from Halifax. Veronik will be looking at the consequences of species loss in food webs, specifically at whether it matters what trophic role a species plays in the food web in terms of how stable that community is over time.

Sneak Peek at the Bermuda Rock Pools

2008-07-10T16:49:00.001-07:00

Just missing a Hurricane (well, we will find out in a day or two for sure) Matt, Kate, and Caitlin are intrepidity braving the wilds of Bermuda and BIOS to track down the elusive Bermudian rock pool. A few sneaks peek at the pools....

The lay of the land...

Matt diving into a rock pool (just kidding!)

A pool...

Con"grad"ulations to the special topics students of 2008!

2008-05-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

This year has been a whirlwind of fabulous student projects. Thanks to all of you who participated in the lab and for the great work that came out of it!

Greg (aka Matt, the skipper) Lynch looked at seasonal variation in patterns of community composition of temperate rock pools...

Kate MacPhee tackled community abundance patterns in Arctic rock pools...

William (aka Mather) Carscallen got webby in the Arctic and Antarctic assembling marine coastal food-webs (the Antarctic ones have more species by the way...can anyone say fishing pressure?)

Alyssa Byers-Heinlein revealed the hierarchical nature of the human food web anticipating with considerable foresight a new study from SFI researcher Mark Newman and colleagues on the hierarchical nature of networks...

and Constance (Connie) Tuck tested her Mangrove food-webs against another labs food-web assembly using the same classic dataset...

Sharky research in the food-web lab

2008-05-06T23:17:00.001-07:00

Christine Ward-Paige (PhD student) and I have been island hopping in Thailand after a very successful ADEX (Asian Dive Exhibition) meeting in Singapore -- searching for sharks and the divemasters that see them. Our research here, which is part of the Global Shark Assessment, has been to "ground-truth" Christine's Historical Sighting Survey. So far we had interviewed divemasters and instructors in Koh Lanta, Krabi, Koh Tao, Koh Pangang, and Koh Samui. It has been a great research trip. Here are some highlights:
*the mysteries of the sharks ID's at Chumpon Pinnacles (grey reef or bull sharks?)
*snorkeling with black tips on Koh Tao at the Black Tip Dive Resort"
*a manta ray sighting at Koh Phi Phi
*meeting the Misool Eco Resort Team in Raja Ampat (who are starting an amazing conservation center which they hope will host students and researchers. These very eco-forward thinking conservationists have worked with local people to protect 200km of reef in the region and have set up a Marine Protected Area).

Press!
*wildsingapore
*bymnews

Congradulations to the honors students of 2008!

2008-05-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

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...

Check out the article in Conservation in Practice on Virtual Ecosystems

2007-05-31T06:12:00.000-07:00

Virtual Ecology

The Human Food Web Project

2007-05-31T05:36:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to the four first year DISPers (Sarah Creaser, Joanna McNeil, Neil Jackson, and Ingen-Catherine Mueller, Dalhousie Integrated Science Program) who participated in a new research project in the foodweblab to assemble a "Human Food Web". Many thanks to second year volunteer Alyssa Byers-Heinlein who helped supervise this pilot study.

Niche model featured in Mathematics of Networks Poster!

2007-05-31T05:34:00.001-07:00

Summer field work

2007-05-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

This is a really exciting summer for us at the foodweb lab.
We headed down to Jamaica last month (in April) to collect some tropical rock pool beasties,
and now we are focusing our attention on the meiofaunal communities in Arctic rock pools (up in Churchill, MA) and local supralittoral rock pool communities in Nova Scotia. We have got some great cultures going from Jamaica and this month we will also be starting some experiments with Brian Starzomski, Marta Coll, and Heike Lotze testing some "fishing down the food web" predictions.

Congradulations to the honors students of 2007!!!

2007-05-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

Constance Tuck and Laura Argument successfully completed their honors thesis projects. Congrats to both of you.

Constance Tuck "Food-web structure of mangrove islands and the theory of island biogeography"

Laura Argument "Why Zooplankton don't eat Great White Sharks: the relationship between body size and trophic position in fishes"