PARENT SESSION
Symposium 5: Marine macroecology
Organized by: JD Witman and K Roy
Tuesday, August 9, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 517 B, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

The ecology of Australasia's kelp forests and forest dwellers at local and biogeographic scales.

Connell, Sean,

ABSTRACT- Biologists are not always mindful of the constraints imposed by their scale of observation and often confuse concepts about local influences and idiosyncrasies with the failure to discover generality and predictability. I argue that local interactions within kelp forests produce regional patterns of diversity. Support for the lack of general patterns in this system, as derived from local studies, has declined since we uncovered striking regional differences in the processes that maintain diversity across Australasia. Importantly, regions also appear to differ in their response to intensifying threats of human expansion (fishing pressure, coastal sedimentation and nutrification) and attempts at management (e.g. marine protected areas and regulation of water quality). Current investigations may not only challenge pessimism about the existence about broad patterns, but also change the way we view one of the most dominant shoreline ecosystems of Australia.

Key words: scale, marine, top down, coastal