Publications

No abstract available.

Background

Mangroves are an ecological assemblage of trees and shrubs adapted to grow in intertidal environments along tropical coasts. Despite repeated demonstration of their economic and societal value, more than 50% of the world's mangroves have been destroyed, 35% in the past two decades to aquaculture and coastal development, altered hydrology, sea-level rise, and nutrient overenrichment...

Mechanistic models for predicting species’ distribution patterns present particular advantages and challenges relative to models developed from statistical correlations between distribution and climate. They can be especially useful for predicting the range of invasive species whose distribution has not yet reached equilibrium. Here, we illustrate how a physiological model of development...

Black mangrove (Avicennia germinans), a subtropical species, has historically occurred in saline marsh habitat along the Louisiana coast, but their distribution has always been sparse and they seldom achieved heights of greater than 1 m. The distribution of black mangrove in Louisiana has been largely limited by freezing temperatures. Weather records show a decrease in freeze frequency...

No abstract available.

The loggerhead sea turtle Caretta caretta faces declining nest numbers and bycatches from commercial longline fishing in the southeastern USA. Understanding spatial and temporal habitat-use patterns of these turtles, especially reproductive females in the neritic zone, is critical for guiding management decisions. To assess marine turtle habitat use within the Dry Tortugas National Park...

Aboveground primary productivity for cypress forests was assessed from measurements of litter production in two age groups and in two hydrological regimes (standing water and free-flowing). Caddo Lake, located in northeast Texas on the Texas-Louisiana border, offered a unique study site since it is dominated by extensive stands composed entirely of Taxodium distichum (L.) Rich,...

Quantifying patterns of temporal trends in species assemblages is an important analytical challenge in community ecology. We describe methods of analysis that can be applied to a matrix of counts of individuals that is organized by species (rows) and time-ordered sampling periods (columns). We first developed a bootstrapping procedure to test the null hypothesis of random sampling from a

The Indo-Pacific lionfishes (Pterois volitans [Linnaeus, 1758] and P. miles [Bennett, 1828]: Family Scorpaenidae) are the first nonnative marine fishes to establish in the Western North Atlantic/Caribbean region. The chronology of the invasion was reported last year (Schofield 2009) using records from the US Geological Survey's Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database. This article...

Downscaling from the predictions of general climate models is critical to current strategies for mitigating species loss caused by climate change. A key impediment to this downscaling is that we lack a fully developed understanding of how variation in physical, biological, or land-use characteristics mediates the effects of climate change on ecological communities within regions. We...

Turtles are linked to energetic food webs as both consumers of plants and animals and prey for many species. Turtle biomass in freshwater systems can be an order of magnitude greater than that of endotherms. Therefore, declines in freshwater turtle populations can change energy transfer in freshwater systems. Here we report on a mark–recapture study at a lake and adjacent borrow pit in a...