Untangling Factors Shaping Community Response to Extreme Events in Coastal Marine Ecosystems

A worldwide upsurge in extreme events, including heat waves, storms, and harmful algal blooms (“red tides”) poses escalating threats to species and ecosystems. Scientists increasingly recognize that such rapid, severe perturbations may have even more severe ecological consequences than gradual shifts in stressors such as temperature and ocean chemistry. I use an approach that integrates ecomechanics, community ecology, and animal physiology to explore key factors that shape ecological responses to such events in coastal marine ecosystems. These include how the physical structure of habitat-forming species can both buffer and exacerbate population risk from heat waves, how the spatial dynamics of a HAB-driven mass mortality may alter species' recovery trajectories, and how predators can affect the ways tropical marine communities respond to acute disturbances like hurricanes.

Speaker: Laura Jurgens, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center