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Guilty: Crabs are killing N.E. saltmarshes

By Guest PostMay 29, 2014Environmentancient buddhist sites, brown university, buddhist king, cape cod, corporate contributioins, crabs, data, ecosystem dynamics, favoour, geographic modeling, herbivory, list of billionaires, long island, mark bertness, mauryan dynasty, monica smith, policy making, proclamations of ashoka, substrate, thomas gillespie, tyler coverdale

Two newly published studies by a team of Brown University researchers provide ample new evidence that the reason coastal saltmarshes are dying from Long Island to Cape Cod is that hungry crabs, left unchecked by a lack of predators, are eating the cordgrass. (See sidebar on marsh die-off and greenhouse gasses.)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A marathon summer of field work by Mark Bertness, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and a squadron of students may finally help settle the heated debate about what’s killing the coastal saltmarshes of southern New England and Long Island. The group’s work has yielded two new papers that offer clear evidence of the cause. (more…)

Invasive crabs help Cape Cod marshes

By Guest PostApril 15, 2013Naturebrown university, cape cod, carcinus maenas, catherine matassa, ecological function, ecologists, erosion, grass eating crabs, invasion, invasive green crab, long vilified, mark bertness, marsh, non consumptive effects, non native species, predatory green crabs, sesarma reticulatum crabs, shores, tyler coverdale

Ecologists are wary of non-native species, but along the shores of Cape Cod where grass-eating crabs have been running amok and destroying the marsh, an invasion of a predatory green crabs has helped turn back the tide in favor of the grass. The counter-intuitive conclusions appear in a new paper in the journal Ecology.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Long vilified, invasive species can sometimes become an ecosystem asset. New Brown University research published online in the journal Ecology reports exactly such a situation in the distressed salt marshes of Cape Cod. There, the invasive green crab Carcinus maenas is helping to restore the marsh by driving away the Sesarma reticulatum crabs that have been depleting the marsh grasses. (more…)

Student’s Curiosity Produces Ecological Buzz

By Guest PostJanuary 29, 2013Environment, Natureabout publishing papers, aerial imagery, cape cod, ecology, Environment, experimental ecologist, geographic information systems, geology class, gis assisted analysis, gis technology, great depression era, historical aerial photography, jon witman, mark bertness, marsh grass, mosquito populations, open curriculum, outdoors, plague, postdoc, project, provocative research, recreational fishing, salt marsh habitats, salt marshes, sesarma crabs, sesarma reticulatum crab, spartina alterniflora, students at brown, tyler coverdale

Students studying what they love is a well-established principle at Brown. For Tyler Coverdale, that meant the outdoors, the environment, and, ultimately, some provocative research on Cape Cod salt marshes through GIS-assisted analysis of historical aerial photography. He loves it.

Tyler Coverdale’s newly published study in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment on the collapse of salt marsh habitats along Cape Cod tells an intriguing, if unfortunate, tale of how three different human activities spanning 70 years finally added up to a problem that no one anticipated. The story of how he made the discovery — which is generating some buzz in ecology — while a Brown undergraduate is a tale of happier serendipities. (more…)

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Guilty: Crabs are killing N.E. saltmarshes

Invasive crabs help Cape Cod marshes

Student’s Curiosity Produces Ecological Buzz