PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

A dynamic forest floor

A new model reveals how two radically different communities coexist beneath the canopies of California's iconic kelp forests

2021-02-22
(Press-News.org) Walk along the beach after a winter storm and you'll see a shore littered with wracks of giant kelp, some 30 to 40 feet long -- evidence of the storm's impact on coastal kelp forests.

Less apparent to the casual beachgoer is what happens to the submarine forests after the storm's fury dies down. This is precisely the topic of a new study led by Raine Detmer(link is external), a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara. She developed a mathematical model describing the effects of severe storms on kelp forest ecosystems, particularly the seafloor, or benthic, communities. The research, published in Ecology (link is external), reveals an ecosystem whose variability is key to its diversity.

Giant kelp forests are a wonder of the underwater world. They share many similarities with terrestrial forests: lush understories, diverse fauna and verdant canopies that stretch skyward toward the sunlight. However, they also have features completely foreign to any woodland. Giant kelp is among the fastest growing organisms on Earth -- able to grow up to two feet per day under ideal conditions -- with a lifecycle much shorter than that of any tree. Also, unlike trees, the presence of the giant algae can change rapidly: Storms can uproot entire kelp forests in February that grow back by September.

These factors make for a forest that is always in flux. "If you have a really dynamic foundation species, like giant kelp, this can cause fluctuations in environmental conditions," said Detmer, a first-year doctoral student in the lab of Holly Moeller(link is external), an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology. conducted the research her senior year at UC Santa Barbara.

Detmer, who conducted the research her senior year at UC Santa Barbara, sought to determine how storms affect the kelp forest floor, which hosts a diverse community of invertebrates and understory macroalgae. To this end, she and her coauthors developed a mathematical model of the ecosystem's intricate relationships. It accounts for factors like the growth rate and mortality of algae and invertebrates, the life stages of giant kelp and the amount of light reaching the seafloor.

"This model is hard to describe," said co-author Moeller, "because it's this chimera built from 100 years of different mathematical ecology models that Raine wove together in this creative way that you need when you have to represent things as complex and variable as a kelp forest."

The model incorporates two very different assemblages of species -- understory algae and sessile invertebrates -- and the complicated lifecycle of kelp itself. To validate it, Detmer relied on data from the Santa Barbara Coastal Long Term Ecological Research project (SBC LTER), a National Science Foundation research site managed by UCSB's Marine Science Institute. "You can't build models like this without 20 years of data," Moeller said. "And you can't find 20 years of data, on kelp forests anyway, anywhere but here, at the SBC LTER."

A driving force behind the make-up of the benthic community is the competition between sessile invertebrates, like sponges and anemones, and understory algae for space. With enough sunlight, the algae can spread and grow more quickly than the invertebrates, but under the shade of the giant kelp, the invertebrates win out.

Simulating the effects of storms on the ecosystem revealed that, by removing the giant kelp, a storm can provide a competitive advantage to the algae over the invertebrates. What's more, if the storm also scours the sea bottom, it exposes more surface for the two factions. And with the seafloor now bathed in sunlight, the algae can take advantage of the real estate more quickly than their competition.

What's fascinating is that the ecosystem doesn't simply remain a meadow, as the algae's time in the sun is only temporary. The model showed that as the vigorous giant kelp again begins to reach for the surface, it shifts the competitive advantage back toward the invertebrates.

In this way, competing groups of organisms with different resource requirements can coexist in these systems, with each faction dominating at a different time. Moeller compares the situation to contestants in a triathlon. If one athlete is a great runner but a poor swimmer, and another is a great swimmer but a poor runner, both competitors will be able to hold their own overall.

The results highlight the effect of a dynamic foundation species, like giant kelp, in shaping an equally dynamic ecosystem. In contrast, ecosystems with more stable foundation species, like redwoods for instance, don't exhibit this kind of behavior. "Visitors to Muir Woods expect to see a redwood forest regardless of the time of year," Moeller said. "But visitors to a kelp forest could find sparse kelp and a carpet of seafloor macroalgae on one dive, and return to see a dense kelp canopy just a few months later."

The findings also support the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, Detmer explained, which contends that there is a sweet spot in terms of disturbance frequency and intensity that will allow multiple different factions to coexist in an ecosystem.

"The intermediate disturbance hypothesis is like the ecologist's version of the Goldilocks story," said Moeller, "where there is a frequency of storm disturbance that is just right to produce these high diversity communities." In other words, different groups of organisms flourish under different disturbance regimes: Frequent storms favor the light-loving macroalgae, while the invertebrates do better under more stable conditions, when the shade of the giant kelp keeps the algae in check.

Researchers have previously investigated the effects of storms on benthic communities at the SBC LTER. But Detmer's model adds predictive power to the insights gleaned from those past experiments and data. "The value that the mathematical models have is they allow you not just to interpolate, but also project and extrapolate," Moeller said. "Once you have a mathematical model that performs as beautifully as Raine's does, then you can use it to start making those projections."

As the effects of climate change become more severe, this predictive power will prove critical to assessing kelp forest health and developing stewardship strategies. Scientists predict storm frequency and intensity will increase, which may hamper the ability of giant kelp to recover from these events. We may see macroalgae-dominated states more often, accompanied by a decline in the numbers of sessile invertebrates. This is important because these animals are an important food source for predators, from sharks and fish to otters and sea stars. A decrease in these prey species could lead to a reduction in the numbers and diversity of predator species.

"Just the ability to quantify what the sensitivity of these systems are helps us," Moeller said. "It can give us a sense of where their breaking points lie."

INFORMATION:



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Researchers develop speedier network analysis for a range of computer hardware

2021-02-22
Graphs -- data structures that show the relationship among objects -- are highly versatile. It's easy to imagine a graph depicting a social media network's web of connections. But graphs are also used in programs as diverse as content recommendation (what to watch next on Netflix?) and navigation (what's the quickest route to the beach?). As Ajay Brahmakshatriya summarizes: "graphs are basically everywhere." Brahmakshatriya has developed software to more efficiently run graph applications on a wider range of computer hardware. The software extends GraphIt, a state-of-the-art graph programming language, to ...

Yale neurologists identify consistent neuroinflammatory response in ICH patients

2021-02-22
Understanding how the immune system responds to acute brain hemorrhage could open doors to identifying treatments for this devastating disease. However, up until now, there has been limited information on inflammation in the brain from human patients, especially during the first days after a hemorrhagic stroke. This led a team of researchers to partner with a large clinical trial of minimally-invasive surgery to tackle defining the human neuroinflammatory response in living patients. "Our goal was to find out, for the first time, how certain key cells of the immune system are activated when they enter the brain after a hemorrhage and how this may shift over the first week. This ...

NASA's Swift helps tie neutrino to star-shredding black hole

NASAs Swift helps tie neutrino to star-shredding black hole
2021-02-22
For only the second time, astronomers have linked an elusive particle called a high-energy neutrino to an object outside our galaxy. Using ground- and space-based facilities, including NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, they traced the neutrino to a black hole tearing apart a star, a rare cataclysmic occurrence called a tidal disruption event. "Astrophysicists have long theorized that tidal disruptions could produce high-energy neutrinos, but this is the first time we've actually been able to connect them with observational evidence," said Robert Stein, a doctoral student at the German Electron-Synchrotron (DESY) research center in ...

Politics and the brain: Attention perks up when politicians break with party lines

Politics and the brain: Attention perks up when politicians break with party lines
2021-02-22
In a time of extreme political polarization, hearing that a political candidate has taken a stance inconsistent with their party might raise some questions for their constituents. Why don't they agree with the party's position? Do we know for sure this is where they stand? New research led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln political psychologist Ingrid Haas has shown the human brain is processing politically incongruent statements differently -- attention is perking up -- and that the candidate's conviction toward the stated position is also playing a role. In other words, there is a stronger neurological response happening when, for example, a Republican takes a position favorable to new taxes, ...

NYU Abu Dhabi researcher sheds new light on the psychology of radicalization

2021-02-22
Abu Dhabi, UAE, February 22, 2021: Learning more about what motivates people to join violent ideological groups and engage in acts of cruelty against others is of great social and societal importance. New research from Assistant Professor of Psychology at NYUAD Jocelyn Bélanger explores the idea of ideological obsession as a form of addictive behavior that is central to understanding why people ultimately engage in ideological violence, and how best to help them break this addiction. In the new study, END ...

Toddler sleep patterns matter

Toddler sleep patterns matter
2021-02-22
Establishing a consistent sleep schedule for a toddler can be one of the most challenging aspects of child rearing, but it also may be one of the most important. Research findings from a team including Lauren Covington, an assistant professor in the University of Delaware School of Nursing, suggest that children with inconsistent sleep schedules have higher body mass index (BMI) percentiles. Their findings, published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, suggest sleep could help explain the association between household poverty and BMI. "We've known for a while that physical activity and diet quality are very strong predictors of weight and BMI," said Covington, the lead author of the article. "I think it's really highlighting that ...

Medications for enlarged prostate linked to heart failure risk

2021-02-22
February 22, 2021 - Widely used medications for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) - also known as enlarged prostate - may be associated with a small, but significant increase in the probability of developing heart failure, suggests a study in The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is pub lished in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. The risk is highest in men taking a type of BPH medication called alpha-blockers (ABs), rather than a different type called 5-alpha reductase inhibitors (5-ARIs), according to the new research by D. Robert Siemens, MD, and ...

Oncotarget: MEK is a promising target in the basal subtype of bladder cancer

Oncotarget: MEK is a promising target in the basal subtype of bladder cancer
2021-02-22
Oncotarget recently published in "MEK is a promising target in the basal subtype of bladder cancer" by Merrill, et al. which reported that while many resources exist for the drug screening of bladder cancer cell lines in 2D culture, it is widely recognized that screening in 3D culture is more representative of in vivo response. To address the need for 3D drug screening of bladder cancer cell lines, the authors screened 17 bladder cancer cell lines using a library of 652 investigational small-molecules and 3 clinically relevant drug combinations in 3D cell culture. Their goal was to identify compounds and classes of compounds with efficacy in bladder cancer. Utilizing ...

Biological assessment of world's rivers presents incomplete but bleak picture

Biological assessment of worlds rivers presents incomplete but bleak picture
2021-02-22
An international team of scientists, including two from Oregon State University, conducted a biological assessment of the world's rivers and the limited data they found presents a fairly bleak picture. "For the places that we have data, the situations are not really that good. There are many species that are declining, threatened or endangered," said Bob Hughes, co-author of the paper and a courtesy associate professor in Oregon State's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. "But for most of the globe, there just is little rigorous data." The work by Hughes and the ...

Study quantifying parachute science in coral reef research shows it's 'still widespread'

2021-02-22
By analyzing 50 years' worth of coral reef biodiversity studies, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on February 22 have quantified the practice of "parachute science," which happens when international scientists, typically from higher-income countries, conduct field studies in another, typically lower-income country, without engaging with local researchers. They found that institutions from several lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries with abundant coral reefs produced less research than institutions based in high-income countries with fewer or in some cases no reefs. They also found that host-nation scientists (scientists from the nations where field research was conducted) were ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Storing electrons from hydrogen for clean chemical reactions

Unlocking how to use mRNA to target Alzheimer’s disease

Kessler Foundation secures $770,000 in grants to advance leading-edge spinal cord research

Going ‘back to the future’ to forecast the fate of a dead Florida coral reef

How extratropical ocean-atmosphere interactions can contribute to the variability of jet streams in the Northern Hemisphere

MSK Research Highlights, March 28, 2024

USDA, Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College collaborate to support Indigenous Seed Sovereignty

For younger women, mental health now may predict heart health later

Missed opportunity: AEDs near cardiac arrests rarely used by bystanders

Eggs may not be bad for your heart after all

Alcohol raises heart disease risk, particularly among women

TTUHSC announces new center for nursing research

Adding just enough fuel to the fire

Impact of synbiotic supplements on the gut microbiome and overall health of penguins

Promising advances in organosilica membranes for separating organic liquid mixtures

Cell phone video technology unveils new method for analyzing walking and gait

Ancient isolation’s impact on modern ecology

Synaptic protein change during development offers clues on evolution and disease

How commercial rooftop solar power could bring affordable clean energy to low-income homes

Taking a closer look at pulmonary fibrosis genetics

Cats with MDR1 mutation at risk of severe reactions to popular medication

IOP Publishing and IPEM mandate reporting of sex and gender in research 

Dogs trained to detect trauma stress by smelling humans’ breath

Electronic device thermal management made simpler and slightly better!

Study: Dangerous surgical site infections can be reduced with simple prevention protocol

Genetic testing of patients with atrial fibrillation can alert clinicians to potential development of life-threatening conditions

Artificial Intelligence tool successfully predicts fatal heart rhythm

What progress has China made in agriculture green development over the past five years?

ALMA finds new molecular signposts in starburst galaxy

Open waste burning linked to air pollution in Northwestern Greenland

[Press-News.org] A dynamic forest floor
A new model reveals how two radically different communities coexist beneath the canopies of California's iconic kelp forests