• Faculty Research Interests
• Scholarly Contributions
• Undergraduate Research
• Marine Science Seminar

  • Bird Friendly Beaches: Managing for Migrating and Wintering Shorebirds.
  • Funding Actionable Coastal Resource Management Research
  • Alternative Microbiomes are Not Fake News! One for Public Health and One for Our Climate
  • Measuring Mucus for Biomarkers of Farmed Salmon Reproductive Fitness
  • Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances are Everywhere! What are They, and What Do We Do Now?
  • Disentangling Trophic Interactions on Nearshore Reefs and Implications for Ecological Resilience
  • Impacts of Coastal Development on Groundwater Composition in Tidal Creek Basins
  • They Grow Up So Slowly: Studying Sea Turtles in the Southeast U.S.
  • Social Carrying Capacity of Mariculture in South Carolina
  • Archives of Fort Johnson Seminars

Robert Dunn, North Inlet-Winyah Bay NERR, University of South Carolina

14 February 2020

The interactions between predators and their prey are key drivers of structure and functioning in many ecosystems. However, the ability of predators to effectively regulate prey abundance can be strongly modified by the context in which trophic interactions occur. I will discuss the effects of four factors which can mediate trophic interactions: density, body size, habitat complexity, and fishery harvest. Working on rocky reefs in southern California, I used both experiments and models to better understand the interactions among sea urchins, their predators, and the nearshore reef-associated communities of which they are a part.