Life Sciences Commons^™

Seagrass Ecosystems: A Career-Long Quest To Understand Their Inner Workings, Kenneth L. Heck Jr

Gulf and Caribbean Research

Four decades of research findings associates on the ecology of seagrasses and their animal and plant associates are described here, along with some of the major changes and advances that have taken place in our understanding of the inner workings of these amazingly productive and diverse ecosystems. Of primary importance are shifts in the recognition of: 1) the importance of the nursery role of seagrasses and how it can be quantified; 2) the importance of direct herbivory in the trophic ecology of seagrass-dominated ecosystems; and 3) the primacy of consumer effects in determining the abundance of algal epiphytes that colonize …