GEL 144 - Winter 2008
Due Wednesday, February 13 - posted 1/28/08

Please read the paper (cited below) by Polis and coauthors (1997) about patterns of subsidy among ecosystems.  Suppose now that there is an extinction in a community or ecosystem of your choice.  It could be a predator, a set of primary producers, or some other creature or creatures that disappear. In a paper not to exceed three pages, explore how this extinction affects the interaction of your favorite community or ecosystem with an adjacent one.  For example, if something happens to a river, what effect would it have on nearshore marine communities or on terrestrial communities near the riverbank?  If something happens in the photic zone of the ocean, what effect would it have on the seafloor below?  You may consider patterns of nutrient exchange between adjacent communities, movement of species between ecosystems, and similar phenomena.  Because we are interested especially in communities of the past, consider using a prehistoric ecosystem or one in the more distant geological past.  

This assignment will be due on Wednesday, February 13.

Polis, G. A., W. B. Anderson, and R. D. Holt.  1997.  Toward an integration of landscape and food web ecologies: the dynamics of spatially subsidized food webs.  Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics 28: 289-316.