Responsibilities

• Supervision of Ph.D. students
• Leader of the UNMDP group

Research Interest

• Community and ecosystem processes of coastal environments
• Ecosystem engeneering effects on sources of energy to the food web

Abstract

• Using community and ecosystem approach we will do an integrative work between the small-scale observations/experiments of the doctoral students (UNMDP) and large time/spatial scale processes of EN and/or other large-scale events worldwide. Our final product should be a conceptual model of how the EN-LN events affect the relative influence of top-down vs. bottom-up processes and how these changes affect the community dynamics due to changes in habitat structure (the ecosystem engineering effects). Special emphasis will be on the effects on human resources, and the possible results of artificial habitat structures on recruitment of economically important species. For this purpose, we will have strong interactions with the other members of this WP, but also with most participants of this project.

Keywords

• top-down, bottom-up, ecosystems engineering, El Niño, benthic community