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.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

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

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...
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Sharky research in the food-web lab


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
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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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