Assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages
Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2018 Foundation species provide critical food and habitat to their associated communities. Consequently, they are disproportionately important in shaping community structure, promoting greater biodiversity and increased species abundance. In the Aleutian...
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ftunivalaska:oai:scholarworks.alaska.edu:11122/9690 2023-05-15T14:18:04+02:00 Assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages Metzger, Jacob Ryan Konar, Brenda Edwards, Matthew Beaudreau, Anne 2018-08 http://hdl.handle.net/11122/9690 en_US eng http://hdl.handle.net/11122/9690 Marine Biology Algal communities Alaska Aleutian Islands Thesis ms 2018 ftunivalaska 2023-02-23T21:37:20Z Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2018 Foundation species provide critical food and habitat to their associated communities. Consequently, they are disproportionately important in shaping community structure, promoting greater biodiversity and increased species abundance. In the Aleutian archipelago, once extensive kelp forests are now relatively rare and highly fragmented. This is due to unregulated urchin grazing shifting the majority of nearshore rocky-reefs from kelp forests to either urchin barrens or "transition forests" - kelp forests devoid of understory algae. The algal communities within kelp forests, transition forests, and urchin barrens represent a stepwise loss in fleshy algal guilds, a regression from a full algal community, to having only canopy kelp, to areas largely denuded of all fleshy algae. This stepwise loss of algal guilds was used to test the designation of the resident canopy-forming kelp, Eualaria fistulosa, as a foundation species--a species that has strong, positive effects on communities where it occurs. Therefore, I assessed the impact that E. fistulosa's occurrence had on faunal community structure (in terms of species diversity, abundance and biomass, and percent bottom cover)and invertebrate size-structure. This study found that the presence of E. fistulosa does not correspond to strong differences in invertebrate size-structure or faunal community structure. However, in kelp forests where E. fistulosa exists in tandem with a variety of subcanopy macroalgae, faunal communities are more species rich, have significantly different community structures with notably higher abundance, biomass, and percent cover of filter feeding taxa, and support sea urchin populations containing significantly higher proportions of larger individuals. Consequently, this study stresses the context dependent role of foundation species and suggests their strong, positive effects on associated communities may change with perturbations to ecosystems. To that end, this study suggests that we ... Thesis Archipelago Alaska Aleutian Islands University of Alaska: ScholarWorks@UA Fairbanks |
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University of Alaska: ScholarWorks@UA |
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English |
topic |
Algal communities Alaska Aleutian Islands |
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Algal communities Alaska Aleutian Islands Metzger, Jacob Ryan Assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages |
topic_facet |
Algal communities Alaska Aleutian Islands |
description |
Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2018 Foundation species provide critical food and habitat to their associated communities. Consequently, they are disproportionately important in shaping community structure, promoting greater biodiversity and increased species abundance. In the Aleutian archipelago, once extensive kelp forests are now relatively rare and highly fragmented. This is due to unregulated urchin grazing shifting the majority of nearshore rocky-reefs from kelp forests to either urchin barrens or "transition forests" - kelp forests devoid of understory algae. The algal communities within kelp forests, transition forests, and urchin barrens represent a stepwise loss in fleshy algal guilds, a regression from a full algal community, to having only canopy kelp, to areas largely denuded of all fleshy algae. This stepwise loss of algal guilds was used to test the designation of the resident canopy-forming kelp, Eualaria fistulosa, as a foundation species--a species that has strong, positive effects on communities where it occurs. Therefore, I assessed the impact that E. fistulosa's occurrence had on faunal community structure (in terms of species diversity, abundance and biomass, and percent bottom cover)and invertebrate size-structure. This study found that the presence of E. fistulosa does not correspond to strong differences in invertebrate size-structure or faunal community structure. However, in kelp forests where E. fistulosa exists in tandem with a variety of subcanopy macroalgae, faunal communities are more species rich, have significantly different community structures with notably higher abundance, biomass, and percent cover of filter feeding taxa, and support sea urchin populations containing significantly higher proportions of larger individuals. Consequently, this study stresses the context dependent role of foundation species and suggests their strong, positive effects on associated communities may change with perturbations to ecosystems. To that end, this study suggests that we ... |
author2 |
Konar, Brenda Edwards, Matthew Beaudreau, Anne |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Metzger, Jacob Ryan |
author_facet |
Metzger, Jacob Ryan |
author_sort |
Metzger, Jacob Ryan |
title |
Assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages |
title_short |
Assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages |
title_full |
Assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages |
title_fullStr |
Assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages |
title_full_unstemmed |
Assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages |
title_sort |
assessing a macroalgal foundation species: community variation with shifting algal assemblages |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/11122/9690 |
geographic |
Fairbanks |
geographic_facet |
Fairbanks |
genre |
Archipelago Alaska Aleutian Islands |
genre_facet |
Archipelago Alaska Aleutian Islands |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/11122/9690 Marine Biology |
_version_ |
1766289811915669504 |