While the examination of transport of marine species by hull fouling has traditionally focused on large commercial tankers and container ships, smaller privately owned vessels are also an important vector. Our current research focuses on recreational vessels traveling along the Eastern Seaboard.
Our research focuses on individual, population, and community level responses to environmental change such as species invasion, global warming and anthropogenic influences. We use a number of methods to monitor benthic epifaunal population dynamics including recruitment, larval abundance, adult community composition, and physical site characteristics such as temperature, salinity, and food availability.
The primary objective of this project is to develop a stressor-response model, initially focused on southern New England coastal habitats, which links alterations of coastal ecosystems to interactions of climate change, anthropogenic stresses resulting from variability in land use patterns, and the changes in populations of recently introduced marine invasive species. The model will be designed to allow managers to assess various strategies in dealing with regional coastal environmental problems and use invasive species as “sentinels” or simple monitors of the effects of interaction of climate change and environmental degradation.
What are the characteristics that make a species a successful invader? What effects do invaders have on resident fauna and flora? Why are some habitats apparently more vulnerable to invasion than other habitats?
Look here for our answers.
We monitor larval abundance, planktivory, and create larval transport models.
View in situ automatic time-series benthic samplers that we have developed and used successfully in shallow coastal environments. We use these samplers to examine the effects of tidal state, diurnal changes in light, and current velocity on larval abundances in the water and the recruitment of benthic species onto deployed substrates or sediment.
