PARENT SESSION
Symposium 22: Expanding Scales, Expanding Perspectives: New Insights into Marine Ecosystem Dynamics
Organized by: P Raimondi and B Menge
Friday, August 8. 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM, SITCC Oglethorpe Auditorium.
Connecting coastal ocean processes, larval recruitment, and geographic patterns of temperate reef fish populations and assemblages: Are we close?
Carr, Mark1, Syms, Craig1, Caselle, Jennifer2, 1 University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA2 University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
ABSTRACT- Kelp forests along the west coast of North America are among the most productive and species-rich ecosystems in the world. Our understanding of the environmental and ecological processes that influence the structure and dynamics of these shallow coastal ecosystems has been constrained by the restricted spatial and temporal scale of ecological studies. Since 1999, we have conducted annual surveys to quantify the structure and dynamics of the macroalgae, macroinvertebrates and fishes that constitute kelp forest communities along the coast of southern and central California. These large-scale surveys indicate that different components of the kelp forest ecosystem exhibit different patterns of spatial structure and dynamics reflecting, in part, a complex layering of responses to geologic and oceanographic processes. Macroalgal abundances differ among years in response to the interactive effects of wave exposure, substratum type, and grazers. Despite the high level of variability in abundance of macroalgae, which are essential sources of habitat and food for many invertebrates and fishes, the distribution and dynamics of invertebrate and fish assemblages have been more constant over time. Replenishment of fish populations and their assemblages largely reflects interannual and shorter temporal scale oceanographic processes that influence the arrival of young and their early post-settlement survival. Such patterns have directed process-oriented studies to identify, for example, how larval recruitment of fish species respond differently to mesoscale oceanographic processes (e.g., upwelling) and how predation contributes to dramatic post-settlement attrition. Large scale, long-term monitoring allows us to examine the relationship between inferences drawn from small-scale process studies (e.g., experiments) to larger scale patterns.
Key words: Large-scale, Long-term, kelpforest, monitoring