Ecology of Rivers & Coasts: Food Webs & Human Impacts

Lecture 4 – Climate Stress and Coastal Food Webs

by Brian R. Silliman, PhD

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1. Introduction and start of Lecture Four
2. Could climate-food web interactions cause salt marsh die-off?
3. Investigating snail grazing on salt marsh grasses
4. Factors driving high snail densities
5. How snails form a consumer front
6. The sequence of events leading to marsh die-off
7. Mussels promote recovery of marsh plants
8. Climate stress amplifies grazer impacts
9. Drought alone does not cause die-back of marsh
10. Climate stress and top-down control in other systems
11. Consumer fronts exist in a variety of other ecosystems
12. Revising the environmental stress model
13. Identifying thresholds reveals ecosystem resistance
14. Understanding combined stresses aids conservation
15. Q&A: What are successful examples of predator reintroduction?
16. Q&A: Can adding more mussels restore marshes?
17. Q&A: Would you consider using methods to kill snail fronts directly?
18. Q&A: Does the nature of predation influence model accuracy?

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