Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Sponges form symbioses with a wide array of mesofauna including polychaetes, crustaceans, brittle stars, and bivalves. These organisms use the sponge for food and shelter, but their effect on the sponge is largely unknown. The...
The importance of predators in influencing community structure is a well-studied area of ecology. However, few studies apply ecological hypotheses of predation when studying multi-predator systems, and even fewer apply these theories to...
Ecosystem engineers can have complex effects on communities through a variety of direct and indirect pathways. Describing these effects is a necessary step in understanding and predicting the effects of engineer species. Red Grouper ...
Globally, species diversity is regulated by speciation and extinction, and regionally it is regulated by competition, niche, colonization, emigration, and extinction, and more locally, by environmental tolerance and species interactions...
Ecological systems are dynamic, yet many experimental studies examine plant-herbivore interactions as from a simple, static, or single perspective. Reciprocal interactions can have profound effects on communities, and ignoring such...
Upland forests in the southeastern United States (U.S.) were once dominated by the pyrogenic longleaf pine (Pinus palustris)-bunchgrass ecosystem that extended south from Virginia to Florida and west to East Texas. Historical land...
The endangered red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) is a keystone species in the southeastern United States where it excavates tree holes in living pines trees. An understanding of the interactions among the species using the tree...
The effect of changing anthropogenic mercury emissions on marine wildlife is of broad interest. Methylmercury can cause reproductive and neurological damage and biomagnifies in food webs. Mercury availability in the Pacific Ocean has...
Coastal areas serve as vital habitat for many marine fishes. Estuaries are a type of coastal system in which freshwater input often drives broad gradients of environmental variables while transporting fluvial nutrient subsidies to marine...
In food webs, which are composed of antagonistic species interactions (with negative component effects), predators frequently suppress herbivores and indirectly benefit plants via "trophic cascades". Yet, ecological webs commonly contain...
Parrotfishes are nominal herbivores whose grazing is considered an important top-down control on benthic coral reef communities, maintaining cropped reef substrates that are conducive to the settlement and recruitment of coral larvae. As...
Traits with close ties to fitness are central in understanding the process of adaptation and whether, and in what contexts, selection acts to erode genetically based phenotypic variation. The persistence and even predominance of...
Symbioses are pervasive in life and confer novel adaptive capabilities that enable ecological expansion into unexplored niches. Evolutionary transitions in symbiosis (terminations, origins, host shifts, or changes in relationship...
A field survey of the southeastern United States showed that Pheidole obscurithorax Naves, an ant introduced from South America, inhabits a 50-mile-wide band along the coast between Mobile, Alabama, and Tallahassee, Florida, and is...
Competition for shared consumable resources is an important form of competition and has been investigated using mechanistic models of consumer and resource growth. The shape of the relationship between consumption and resource density...
The amount, composition, and configuration of habitat in the surrounding landscape can affect the structure of local communities, how those communities interact, and the ecosystem functions they perform. In the following chapters I...
Plants are fed upon by a range of insect foragers, including herbivores and pollinators. Because herbivores damage plant parts and pollinators transfer pollen among plants, plants generally benefit by avoiding herbivores and attracting...
Many ecosystems depend on fire to maintain appropriate habitats and to trigger important life history events, such as flowering or seed germination. Historically, fires were often patchy, but due to fire suppression and other human...
Nesting distributions of animals vary from isolated individuals to large colonies of breeding individuals and they can be influenced by numerous factors, including environmental conditions, relatedness and social interactions. Parrots...
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
