Gruner Lab
  • Home
  • PEOPLE
  • RESEARCH
  • PUBLICATIONS
  • COURSES
  • NEWS
  • EMERALD ASH BORER
  • JOIN US!

Alumni Alexander Forde publishes thesis in Ecology and the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America

10/3/2022

 
Picture
Photo credit: D. Gruner
Alexander Forde studied classic top-down and bottom-up forces in food webs with his experimental study in an unusual ecosystem. On mangrove cays inside the Belizean barrier reef, severe P-limitation on the peat substrates curbs red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) growth within interior ponds. Along the pond fringes, subsidies from wind-blown flocculent microbial biomass transform leaf traits and growth form, creating fine-grained productivity gradients and heterogeneity in arthropod and bird communities. On Twin Cays, Belize, our study leveraged this steep productivity gradient and experimentally excluded insectivorous birds for more than 1 year. Although bird predation consistently disrupted arthropod numbers and reduced their herbivory, microbial detrital subsidies alone explained red mangrove growth dynamics.

Read the article in Ecology >>

View the photo gallery of the Bulletin of the ESA >>

Comments are closed.

UMD GrunerLab Home

Follow @GrunerDaniel
Department of Entomology
4112 Plant Sciences Bldg
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
4142 Plant Sciences (office)
4164 Plant Sciences (lab)
(301) 405-3957
​dsgruner [at] umd.edu
Copyright © 2021
  • Home
  • PEOPLE
  • RESEARCH
  • PUBLICATIONS
  • COURSES
  • NEWS
  • EMERALD ASH BORER
  • JOIN US!