- Allison Case - endocrine lab manager, SEZARC
- Jeremy A. Collings - PhD candidate, University of Oregon
- Joey Krieger Lodge - PhD student, University of Colorado, Boulder
- Evald Maceno - PhD candidate, Univeristy of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
- Sierra B. Perez - PhD candidate, Indiana University
- Bethany L. Williams - postdoctoral fellow, University of Missouri, St. Louis
Are the effects of environmental drivers consistent across ecological scales?
Anthropogenic impacts are rapidly altering historic environmental conditions, with consequences across ecological scales, including reduced fitness in individuals, reduced population sizes, and reduced diversity in communities. It remains unclear whether these effects are consistent across ecological scales (i.e., similar in direction and magnitude) or become amplified or reduced with increasing ecological complexity. For example, declines in fitness and population sizes in some species within a community could be offset by increased performance of others (due to direct effects of environmental change and/or indirect effects arising from changes in competitive dynamics), such that community-level properties are unaffected (see figure below).
Body size is known to be a strong predictor of fitness in fish, and changes in body size are likely to have impacts at the population and community levels. Leveraging long-term (5+ year) records of fish communities, we will fit hierarchical models to evaluate how changes in water temperature through time at a given site affect individuals (i.e., fish length), populations (counts), and communities (Shannon's diversity and total community size). We will also consider if/how temperature effects vary a) among species within a community and b) between aquatic systems (marine vs. freshwater).
Coming soon!
LTER Scientific Computing Team website & NCEAS' Resources for Working Groups