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A Conservation Palaeobiological Perspective On Chesapeake Bay Oysters, Rowan Lockwood, Roger L. Mann
A Conservation Palaeobiological Perspective On Chesapeake Bay Oysters, Rowan Lockwood, Roger L. Mann
VIMS Articles
The eastern oyster plays a vital role in estuarine habitats, acting as an ecosystem engineer and improving water quality. Populations of Chesapeake Bay oysters have declined precipitously in recent decades. The fossil record, which preserves 500 000 years of once-thriving reefs, provides a unique opportunity to study pristine reefs to establish a possible baseline for mitigation. For this study, over 900 fossil oysters were examined from three Pleistocene localities in the Chesapeake region. Data on oyster shell lengths, lifespans and population density were assessed. Comparisons to modern Crassostrea virginica, sampled from monitoring surveys of similar environments, reveal that fossil oysters …
Global Change Effects On Plant Communities Are Magnified By Time And The Number Of Global Change Factors Imposed, Kj Komatsu, Ml Avolio, Et Al, David S. Johnson, Et Al
Global Change Effects On Plant Communities Are Magnified By Time And The Number Of Global Change Factors Imposed, Kj Komatsu, Ml Avolio, Et Al, David S. Johnson, Et Al
VIMS Articles
Global change drivers (GCDs) are expected to alter community structure and consequently, the services that ecosystems provide. Yet, few experimental investigations have examined effects of GCDs on plant community structure across multiple ecosystem types, and those that do exist present conflicting patterns. In an unprecedented global synthesis of over 100 experiments that manipulated factors linked to GCDs, we show that herbaceous plant community responses depend on experimental manipulation length and number of factors manipulated. We found that plant communities are fairly resistant to experimentally manipulated GCDs in the short term (< 10 y). In contrast, long-term (>= 10 y) experiments show increasing community divergence of …