Marine Community Ecology and Conservation

Marine Community Ecology and Conservation was written to give advanced undergraduate and graduate students a current overview of what is known about the structure, organization, and conservation of organism assemblages that live on the sea floor. It largely focuses on advancements over the past decade since the publication of Marine Community Ecology (2001). Each chapter is written by leading researchers to give students an up-to-date look at these communities, and what remains to be learned about them.

The book is organized into three parts. The first part explores general processes that generate pattern in benthic communities. These introductory chapters examine how physical and biological forces interacting with historical and genetic constraints operate to structure marine communities. The second part examines the ecology of specific marine benthic community types, ranging from rocky shores and soft substrate habitats to kelp forests to coral reefs. These chapters are intended to be the most current summaries available of our understanding of these communities. The final part examines conservation and management issues of marine communities. The closing chapters emphasize how pervasively and profoundly marine communities are impacted by humans and outlines how we can use our understanding of these systems to manage and preserve the valuable services and resources they provide.

Marine Community Ecology and Conservation is extensively referenced and includes a bibliography of over 5,000 citations. It is suitable as a text for advanced marine ecology courses and seminars, as well as a general reference for students and researchers.

Instructor's Resource Library

This resource includes all figures (line-art illustrations and photographs) and tables from the textbook, provided as both high- and low-resolution JPEGs. All have been formatted and optimized for excellent projection quality. Also included are ready-to-use PowerPoint presentations of all figures and tables.

Mark Bertness is Robert Brown Professor of Biology at Brown University. He was born in Tacoma, Washington and grew up exploring the shores of Puget Sound. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Puget Sound in 1971. He has been at Brown University since 1980. Dr. Bertness is the author of Atlantic Shoreline Ecology: A Natural History, published by Princeton University Press in 2006. His research focuses on the structure, dynamics and conservation of shoreline communities--particularly salt marsh plant communities--and the sessile invertebrate and seaweed communities of rocky shores.

John Bruno is a marine ecologist and Professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research is focused on marine biodiversity, coral reef ecology and conservation, and the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems. He earned his Ph.D. from Brown University in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University in disease ecology. Dr. Bruno is currently working primarily in Belize, the Bahamas, Cuba, and the Galapagos Islands. He is an avid blogger and co-developer of the oceans website SeaMonster.

Brian Silliman is the Rachel Carson Associate Professor of Marine Conservation Biology in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He holds both B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Virginia, and completed his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University. Dr. Silliman was named a David H. Smith Conservation Fellow with The Nature Conservancy in 2004 and a Visiting Professor with the Royal Netherlands Society of Arts and Sciences in 2011. He has also received several awards, including the Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Naturalists (2006), a Young Investigator Grant Award from the Andrew Mellon Foundation (2007), and a NSF Career Grant Award (2011). Dr. Silliman has published thirteen book chapters and over ninety peer reviewed journal articles, and co-edited the book Human Impacts on Salt Marshes: A Global Perspective (with T. Grosholtz and M. D. Bertness, 2009). His teaching and research are focused on community ecology of coastal ecosystems, conservation and restoration, physical-forcing and disease-mediated control of food web dynamics, plant-animal interactions, and evolution and ecological consequences of cooperative behavior.

Jay Stachowicz is Professor of Ecology and Evolution at The University of California Davis. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and grew up exploring the shores of Cape Cod Bay. He received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in 1993, and did his doctoral work with Mark Hay at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, studying the ecology and evolution of mutualistic interactions between crabs and their coral or seaweed host-plants. He has been at UC Davis since 2000. Dr. Stachowicz co-edited the book Species Invasions: Insights into Ecology, Evolution, and Biogeography, published by Sinauer Associates in 2005. He was awarded the George Mercer Prize from the Ecological Society of America in 2004 and the UC Davis Academic Senate Teaching Award in 2012. He is also an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. His major research interests include both the causes and consequences of patterns of biodiversity in coastal marine communities--including rocky shores, kelp forests, mudflats, and seagrass beds. He has taught marine ecology in various forms at the undergraduate and graduate levels since 1997.

Forward by Jeremy B. C. Jackson and Robert Treat Paine

1. A Short History of Marine Community Ecology, Mark D. Bertness, John F. Bruno, Brian R. Silliman, and John J. Stachowicz

PART 1. PROCESSES THAT GENERATE PATTERN IN MARINE COMMUNITIES

2. The Physical Context of Marine Communities, Marc Weissburg, Brian Helmuth, and Jon Witman
3. Foundation Species in Marine Ecosystems, Andrew H. Altieri and Johan van de Koppel
4. Marine Dispersal, Ecology, and Conservation, Stephen R. Palumbi and Malin L. Pinsky
5. The Role of Infectious Diseases in Marine Communities, Kevin D. Lafferty and C. Drew Harvell
6. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function: Does Pattern Influence Process?, Mary I. O'Connor and Jarrett E. Byrnes
7. The Biogeography of Marine Communities, Eric Sanford
8. Marine Historical Ecology: Informing the Future by Learning from the Past, Heike K. Lotze and Loren McClenachan

PART 2. COMMUNITY TYPES

9. Intertidal Rocky Shores, Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi and Geoffrey C. Trussell
10. Soft-Sediment Communities, James E. Byers and Jonathan H. Grabowski
11. Salt Marsh Communities, Mark D. Bertness and Brian R. Silliman
12. Ecology of Seagrass Communities J. Emmett Duffy, A. Randall Hughes, and Per-Olav Moksnes
13. Coral Reef Ecosystems: A Decade of Discoveries, Isabelle M. Côté and Nancy Knowlton
14. Kelp Forests: Dynamic Patterns, Processes, and Feedbacks, Robert S. Steneck and Craig R. Johnson
15. Pelagic Communities, Jonathan A. D. Fisher and Kenneth T. Frank
16. Phytoplankton Communities, Kyle F. Edwards and Elena Litchman
17. Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Communities, Lauren S. Mullineaux

PART 3. CONSERVATION

18. Services of Marine Ecosystems: A Quantitative Perspective, Edward B. Barbier, Heather M. Leslie, and Fiorenza Micheli
19. Climate Change and Marine Communities, John F. Bruno, Christopher D. G. Harley, and Michael T. Burrows
20. Threats to Marine Ecosystems: Overfishing and Habitat Degradation, Boris Worm and Hunter S. Lenihan
21. Ecosystem-Based Approaches, to Marine Conservation and Management Benjamin S. Halpern and Tundi Agardy
22. Marine Restoration Ecology, Sean P. Powers and Katharyn E. Boyer
23. The Future of Marine Conservation and Management, Mary H. Ruckelshaus, Peter M. Kareiva, and Larry B. Crowder