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NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
MARINE SCIENCE CENTER
SPRING 2012
Marine Science Center
Northeastern University
430 Nahant Road
Nahant, MA 01908
THE RISING TIDE
FACULTY PROFILE:
FACULTY PROFILE: Biodiversity Expert Matt Bracken
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intern, and we decided to test whether there was
actually a causal relationship between sessile
diversity and mobile diversity. When we carefully
surveyed the shoreline at East Point, we found
that a few really common sessile species - a
rockweed, a barnacle, and a mussel - were present everywhere and comprised the vast majority
of stuff growing on the rocks.
As sessile diversity increased, a variety of rare
seaweeds and sessile invertebrates joined those
common species on the rocks, and plots that
contained both common and rare sessile species
had more mobile species living in them. This
raised the possibility that it was these really rare
species that were responsible for determining the
number and abundance of animals higher on the
food chain.
We ran a series of experiments to test this idea,
and found that the removal of rare sessile species
had huge and disproportionate effects on mobile
animals. Contrary to previous research highlights
the important role of “keystone” predators at the
top of the food web, our studies have shown that
the loss of these extremely rare “cornerstone”
species — which collectively represent less than
10 percent of the biomass at the base of the local
intertidal food web — cause major declines in
the abundance and diversity of animals, such as
snails and crabs.
How are students involved in your research?
Students, including both graduate students and
undergrads, are involved in all aspects of my
research. There are currently four graduate students doing really cool projects in my lab group,
and we are always looking for eager undergraduates to both help us with the work we do and
to conduct their own research projects. I also
involve Three Seas Program students in my research. The easiest way to get involved is to send
me an email - [email protected] - with a copy
of your resume and a brief statement describing
why you’re interested in working with us. You
can check out the Bracken Lab website at http://
www.northeastern.edu/biodiversity/.
BIODIVERSITY EXPERT
MATT BRACKEN
The Rising Tide
Spring 2012
Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center (MSC) is comprised of incredibly
talented faculty members and students. In this issue of the Rising Tide, we talk to Prof.
Matt Bracken—a biodiversity expert whose reseach focuses on how nutrients, consumers, and stress modify diversity in marine communities, and how species diversity and
identity affect key biogeochemical processes.
Director
Geoffrey Trussell, PhD
Faculty
Joseph Ayers, PhD
Matthew Bracken, PhD
Donald Cheney, PhD
William Detrich, PhD
Slava Epstein, PhD
Tarik Gouhier, PhD
Jonathan Grabowski, PhD
Brian Helmuth, PhD (Arriving Soon)
Randall Hughes, PhD
Gwilym Jones, PhD
David Kimbro, PhD
Rebeca Rosengaus, PhD
Geoffrey Trussell, PhD
Steven Vollmer, PhD
What kind of research is your lab
currently conducting?
We are interested in understanding the
causes and consequences of changes in marine biodiversity. Biological systems are sort
of like machines. If parts are lost or broken,
they don’t work as well or as efficiently as
they should.
In marine ecosystems, many different factors,
including natural processes such as predator
activity and variation in nutrients, and human impacts such as pollution and invasive
species, determine the number and relative
abundances of species. We do experiments
to figure out which factors are primarily responsible for determining how many species
live in a particular location and how abundant
they are. We also test how changes in the
number of species in a location affect how
well that ecosystem “works.”
Post-Doctoral Researchers
James Douglass, PhD
Steven Scyphers, PhD
Cascade Sorte, PhD
Staff
Sal Genovese, PhD
Sarah Gillig
Ted Lyman
Carole McCauley
Sarah Phenix
Heather Sears, PhD
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What makes the Nahant shoreline a great
place to study marine organisms?
My lab group focuses primarily, though not
exclusively, on understanding the structure (the
organisms and their abundances) and dynamics
(the interactions among species and the interactions between organisms and the physical
environment) of rocky intertidal habitats.
We love to work on rocky shores for a few
reasons: (1) Really pronounced gradients occur
over very small scales. Some examples include
changes from lower on the shore to higher on
the shore and from areas protected from waves
to areas exposed to pounding surf. (2) Applying rigorous experimental approaches - for
example, removing species to test their roles - is
relatively straightforward because we can easily
access the shore at low tide. (3) Rocky shores
are a great way to introduce people to marine
habitats. There are only a handful of locations
in this country where a year-round marine lab is
located adjacent to a rocky shore, and Nahant is
one of them.
What sets the MSC apart from other marine
labs in the northeast?
Three things really stand out for me. First, the
diversity of marine habitats, from subtidal rock
walls to rocky shores, to seagrass meadows,
to saltmarshes, is amazing. We can access
all of these systems via foot or by driving only
a few minutes. And because my lab group
mostly studies rocky shores, being able to
walk from the lab out to our field sites is both
incredibly convenient and unique.
Finally, the faculty, graduate students, and staff
make this a fun and productive place to work.
Can you explain the research you recently
had published in the journal Ecology Letters?
This project had its inception in surveys that
I do with the Three Seas Program students in
my fall marine ecology course here at the MSC.
We observed that the number of mobile animal
species (things like snails, crabs, and limpets)
living on local rocky shores is closely tied to
the number of sessile invertebrate (including mussels, barnacles, sea anemones, and
hydroids) and seaweed species growing on
the rocks there. A student from the program,
Natalie Low, worked for me as a summer
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Summer Cinema
by the Sea
Introducing Marine Science
to the Next Generation
MSC Researchers Attend the 2012 Benthic Ecology Meeting
By Christine Newton, graduate student at the MSC
Come join us for the 2012 Summer Cinema
Between teaching and conducting
research, spring is a busy time at Northeastern University’s Marine Science
Center (MSC) for faculty and graduate
students. A number of researchers at
the MSC are also took time to attend
the Benthic Ecology Meeting in Norfolk,
Virginia this past March.
by the Sea. All films begin at 7 p.m. in the
MSC’s Murphy Bunker, located at 430 Nahant
Rd., Nahant, Mass. Light refreshments will be
served 30 minutes before the movie starts. No
RSVP is required. If you have any questions,
contact Outreach Coordinator Carole McCauley at [email protected].
The Benthic Ecology Meeting is in its
41st year and is one of the largest scientific conferences for marine biologists
in the United States. This year, the fourday event was hosted by Old Dominion
University (Norfolk, VA) and brought
together more than 700 scientists ranging from top ecologists to graduate and
undergraduate marine biology students.
Tuesday, May 22nd at 7:00pm
BAG IT
Try going a day without plastic. We follow “everyman” Jeb Berrier as he embarks on a global tour
to unravel the complexities of our plastic world.
What starts as a film about plastic bags evolves
into a wholesale investigation into plastic’s effects
on our oceans, environment, and bodies.
Tuesday, June 19th at 7:00pm
A SENSE OF WONDER
Fifty years, ago backlash against “Silent Spring”
thrust author Rachel Carson into the center of political maelstrom. In the final year of her life, Carson
recounts the attacks by the chemical industry, the
government, and the press as she focuses her
limited energy to get her message to Congress and
the American people.
Tuesday, July 24th at 7:00pm
OCEAN FRONTIERS
This new film takes us on an inspiring voyage to
seaports and watersheds across the country to
meet an intermingling of unlikely allies of industrial
shippers and whale biologists, farmers and fishermen, snorkelers and many more, all of them embarking on a new course of cooperation in defense
of the seas that sustain us.
This scientific conference is a great
meeting that provides opportunities for
Fondest childhood memories of
time spent at the shore are common to many living near the coast.
Contemporary research suggests
that even the earliest life experiences in the natural environment
play an important role in the development of environmental literacy,
without which people are less
likely to engage in environmentally
responsible behaviors.
In January 2011, the Marine Science Center launched its inaugural
Sea Tots program for preschoolers, unsure of the potential level of
interest in the surrounding communities. The program was full to
capacity by the third week, and
the Outreach Program recently
wrapped up its fifth successful
session.
Open to children ages 3-6, each
six-week program introduces marine science topics through handson activities, demonstrations, and
multimedia resources in a 90-minute weekly session that culminates
in the kids having free time at the
Center’s touch tanks, which house
exclusively local species.
Each parent/guardian-chaperoned
session features a different theme
such as “The Rocky Shore”, “Up
the Food Chain”, and “Ocean
Exploration”. Participants have
engaged in such activities as
octopus-printing, constructing
submarines, pressing seaweed,
and designing and testing neutrally
buoyant plankton models. Many
parents express their pleasure at
finding a locally-based science
program for this age group.
Word of the program has spread,
and the Outreach Program is
increasingly in demand to deliver
interactive programs offsite at area
preschools, at which its traveling
touch tanks are a major attraction. Also, despite proximity to the
shore, there are many in neighboring communities that have not
experienced the ubiquitous coastal
experiences of youth, and the
Outreach Program will be exploring
ways to involve those audiences in
the Sea Tots experience.
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researchers from all over the United
States (and a few internationally) to
present and discuss important topics
from any type of research related to
benthic ecology. “Benthic” refers to anything living at the lowest level in a body
of water, such as the seafloor or the bottom of estuaries, including salt marshes,
seagrass beds, or rocky intertidal
communities. Therefore the research
that is presented at this conference can
be quite diverse! This year, some of the
topics included the effects of climate
change, genetic diversity, larval dispersal, and many topics related to trophic
dynamics—the “who-eats-who” of ecology. The organisms that are studied in
each of these topics run the gamut from
seaweed, crabs, snails and fish, all the
way up to hammerhead sharks!
So why were we so excited to attend
“Benthics”? For some from the MSC,
this conference was a first, while others
of us made the journey to Benthics
before. We proudly shared the results of
our research that we have put countless hours into conducting over the
past year, through presentations to our
colleagues and large posters to put on
display. Recently, Benthics has even
introduced a film festival, inviting researchers to think outside the box in the
ways they present their research.
Benthics is an extremely student-friendly conference as it opens many new
channels of communication, providing
important feedback from colleagues on
our research, while seeing old friends
from past meetings and meeting with
potential future research collaborators.
A number of faculty, post-doctoral researchers and graduate students from the Marine Science Center presented their research at the
41st Benthic Ecology Meeting in Norfolk, VA:
Dr. Matthew Bracken (Assistant Professor) – Realistic changes in biodiversity alter nutrient use and photosynthetic rates of intertidal
seaweed assemblages
Dr. James Douglass (Post-doctoral Researcher) – Interpreting and controlling for natural variation in rocky intertidal community structure in the context of a large-scale manipulative experiment
Kylla Benes (Graduate Student) – Exploring biodiversity-productivity relationships on Gulf of Maine rocky shores
Brendan Gillis (Graduate Student) – Staying hungry: Ocean acidification increases seaweed growth but leaves herbivores wanting more
Elizabeth Hemond (Graduate Student) – Branching corals show within-colony differences in gene expression
Catherine Matassa (Graduate Student) – A little risk goes a long way: a snail’s conflict between the risk of starvation and the risk of
predation
Christine Newton (Graduate Student) – Utilization of the invasive alga Gracilaria vermiculophylla by the native mud snail Illyanassa
obsoleta
Valerie Perini (Graduate Student) – Are snails picky eaters? It depends on the season: the impact of seasonal variation and tidal elevation on seaweed-herbivore interactions
In addition, visiting researchers Annick Drouin, Natalie Low, and Molly Roberts presented research that has been conducted at the Marine
Science Center.
If you would like to see some of the posters that have been presented at this (and other) scientific meetings, stop by the Marine Science
Center to see them on display throughout the halls.
High School Marine Science Program Kicks Off in August
The Coastal Ocean Science Academy
(COSA) provides high school students with
an unforgettable two-week introduction to
marine science. The Academy is held at
the Northeastern University Marine Science Center, a world-class research and
teaching institution on the rocky shores of
Nahant, Mass.
Participants will build knowledge of coastal
and marine biology, including ecological
and physical characteristics of several
habitats. They will develop skills such
as monitoring water quality, measuring
species richness and diversity, identifying
marine organisms, and exploring threats
facing our coastal and marine resources.
Off-site field experiences have included a
whale watch, marine invasive sampling in
Gloucester, and beach profiling at Crane’s
Beach.
This year’s COSA program will run from
Monday, August 13 through Saturday,
August 25. The hours are from 8:30 a.m. –
3 p.m. Monday through Friday, culminating
with the family day on Saturday, August 25
from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Registration will take place on a first-come,
first-serve basis to fill a limited number of
slots. A limited number of scholarships will
be available to eligible students.
To learn more about the COSA program,
applications, fees, scholarships, and more,
please contact Carole McCauley, Outreach
Program Coordinator
at the Marine Science Center: (781) 5817370, x321, or [email protected]
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