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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Quantifying The Top-Down Effects Of Grazers On A Rocky Shore: Selective Grazing And The Potential For Competition, Diana Lascala-Gruenewald, Luke Miller, Matthew Bracken, Bengt Allen, Mark Denny
Quantifying The Top-Down Effects Of Grazers On A Rocky Shore: Selective Grazing And The Potential For Competition, Diana Lascala-Gruenewald, Luke Miller, Matthew Bracken, Bengt Allen, Mark Denny
Faculty Publications, Biological Sciences
The effect of grazers on the diversity, distribution, and composition of their principal food source has rarely been described for the high intertidal zone of rocky shores, a model system for studying the potential effects of climate change. Along rocky, wave-swept shores in central California, the microphytobenthos (MPB) supports diverse assemblages of limpets and littorine snails, which, at current benign temperatures, could potentially partition food resources in a complementary fashion, thereby enhancing secondary productivity. Two limpet species in particular, Lottia scabra and L. austrodigitalis, may partition components of the MPB, and are likely to affect the composition of the …