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VIMS Articles

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Coral reef

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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Global Patterns In The Impact Of Marine Herbivores On Benthic Primary Producers, Alistair G.B. Poore, Alexandra H. Campbell, Ross Coleman, Graham J. Edgar, Veijo Jormalainen, Pamela L. Reynolds, Erik E. Sotka, John J. Stachowicz, Richard Taylor, Mathew A. Vanderklift, J. Emmett Duffy May 2012

Global Patterns In The Impact Of Marine Herbivores On Benthic Primary Producers, Alistair G.B. Poore, Alexandra H. Campbell, Ross Coleman, Graham J. Edgar, Veijo Jormalainen, Pamela L. Reynolds, Erik E. Sotka, John J. Stachowicz, Richard Taylor, Mathew A. Vanderklift, J. Emmett Duffy

VIMS Articles

Despite the importance of consumers in structuring communities, and the widespread assumption that consumption is strongest at low latitudes, empirical tests for global scale patterns in the magnitude of consumer impacts are limited. In marine systems, the long tradition of experimentally excluding herbivores in their natural environments allows consumer impacts to be quantified on global scales using consistent methodology. We present a quantitative synthesis of 613 marine herbivore exclusion experiments to test the influence of consumer traits, producer traits and the environment on the strength of herbivore impacts on benthic producers. Across the globe, marine herbivores profoundly reduced producer abundance …


Sponge Host Characteristics Shape The Community Structure Of Their Shrimp Associates, Kristen M. Hultgren, J. Emmett Duffy May 2010

Sponge Host Characteristics Shape The Community Structure Of Their Shrimp Associates, Kristen M. Hultgren, J. Emmett Duffy

VIMS Articles

Both body size and habitat architecture have pervasive effects on the form, function, and interactions of organisms, and can play especially important roles in structuring intimate associations between host organisms and their obligate associates. In this study, we examined how body size is related to host use in a diverse clade of closely related snapping shrimp species (Synalpheus) that live in the interior canals of sponges. Using data from an extensive survey of sponge-dwelling Synalpheus from Jamaica, we tested how sponge morphology (interior canal size and individual sponge volume) was related to the identity and diversity of Synalpheus …