International Research Fellowship Program: Benthic-Pelagic Coupling in the Ocean: Integrating Across the Life-cycle

Phillips Nicole E, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

0202713 Phillips The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Nicole E. Phillips to work with Dr. Jonathan Gardner at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Support for this project is provided by the U.S.-New Zealand Program. The influence of larger scale ocean processes on the local ecology of marine species is poorly understood. This project addresses these processes, using intertidal mussel populations in New Zealand as a model system. In marine ecosystems, most species have complex life cycles characterized by a benthic, or bottom-dwelling, adult stage and a larval stage that is free-living and drifts in the plankton for weeks to months. The ocean environment can, therefore, shape patterns of distribution and abundance of these organisms through its action on both the free-living and the bottom-dwelling stages. To date, no studies have applied the necessary integrative approaches to ascertain how the ocean environment influences benthic invertebrates over the course of their entire life cycle. Such integrative approaches are critical to our understanding of the cumulative ecological effects of oceanographic processes on marine populations, because different life-stages may respond differentially to the same ocean features. The focus of this project will be the influence of ocean processes on larval stages and the subsequent interactions that arise from varied responses by different life-stages. Two approaches will be used, field monitoring and manipulative experiments, to examine the role of oceanographic processes shaping larval dynamics and how different life-stages of marine organisms interact to ultimately shape local and regional patterns of distribution and abundance. This collaboration will produce a more complete understanding of the role of benthic-pelagic coupling on the abundance and distribution of benthic marine invertebrates on rocky shores. Dr. Gardner's current focus is on demographic consequences of variable ocean conditions to populations of adult mussels on the shore, mediated through effects of variable planktonic food.