The land of OZ

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

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!

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

ASLO/NABS in Santa Fe

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

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!

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?

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

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

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

New MSC student: Grace Lotz

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!

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!

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!

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

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

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

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?

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

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

Congrats Dr. Berreville

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!

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

New Honors Students 2009/2010

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

Experimental Photography

 

 

 

Upcoming Talks

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

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

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.