Theoretical Ecology
Testing ecological theory is an important ongoing part of the Coastal Estuarine Ecology Lab programs. In all of our efforts we strive to draw links between what we’re learning and advancing general theory so that our research will not only benefit our own subdisciplines but ecology as a whole. In pursuit of that, we often participate in or lead projects in other ecosystems or regions where data are available. A few current themes in our work are organic matter processing in running waters, controls on secondary production, and metacommunity theory.
Secondary production, the production of animal tissue and biomass over time, has been a growing research theme in several our projects, including our work in coastal rivers and our monitoring and assessment work in seagrass ecosystems. Secondary production is a fundamentally important ecosystem function that is relatively understudied, so additional field studies on this topic have the potential to advance our understanding of this process. However, we are also participating in several efforts that stem from a Research Coordination Network lead by Matt Whiles at the University of Florida and Jay Jones at the University of Alaska. We recently led a paper in Science Advances that pulled together all published estimates of secondary production of invertebrate communities in running waters and showed that temperature and low flow events were universally important predictors of invertebrate production in rivers and streams. This work continues and includes several avenues of research including understanding the role of food availability and the importance of biodiversity to secondary production.