Research
Coastal Field Work: From understanding to restoring systems
We manipulate conditions in the field to determine relationships between environmental factors, diversity, and ecosystem services. Local coastal sites around New York city are excellent places for our field work because of the rich diversity of organisms they house, the environmental gradients they span, the stressors they encompass, and the valuable services they provide. Many coastal communities are also the target of management actions ranging from restoration to harvest management, and a better understanding of how diversity is maintained and why it matters in these areas is essential to motivating, guiding, and valuing management actions.
Much of our current work focuses on oyster reefs and salt marshes. These two once-common local communities provided a host of services to the city, but they've been largely lost over past centuries. There are major efforts to rebuild these areas, but we need to know what factors (species interactions, environmental conditions) are necessary to give restoration activities the best shot at success. To answer these questions we combine our work in "pristine", stable communities with work on restored or degraded sites to consider how diversity changes due to management actions or disturbance.
Our work in coastal systems focuses on how species interactions interact with abiotic factors to shape community diversity and ecosystem functioning. Beginning with a focus on non-consumptive effects, the lab's interest has grown to consider how predators, prey, competitors, and mutualists all interact with their environment to influence community composition, contributions to important ecosystem services, and outcomes of management actions. Current work includes how predators impact biogeochemical cycles in salt marshes and oyster reefs and how mutualisms in salt marshes impact marsh restoration practices.
Related Articles (* indicate mentored undergraduate author, ** indicates mentored graduate student author)
Fakhoury, W.A.*, and Gosnell, J.S. Limits to local adaptation? Some impacts of temperature on Nucella emarginata differ among populations, while others do not. 2014. Marine Biology: 161:1943-1948.
Quantitative exploration of the drivers and impacts of diversity
We also try to understand principles that govern community structure and functioning by analyzing "big data", developing models to explain and predict how individual, populations, and communities grow, and carrying out meta-analyses to put our field work into the larger context of ecological research. The local organisms and communities we work with are the focus of some of the quantitative work in the lab, such as our efforts to develop models that can be used to determine optimal places to reintroduce oysters or predict future changes in marsh spread and denitrification potential. Our quantitative emphasis also allows us to expand our reach to communities outside of New York (e.g., efforts to quantify large-scale patterns in diversity and impacts in hyperdiverse natural systems such as kelp and rain forests) and consider topics from a broader perspective (e.g., conducting meta-analyses to consider drivers and impacts of non-consumptive effects, developing models that can used to access reintroduction outcome and better ongoing efforts).
Analysis of large-scale patterns in species’ and community traits over time and space and relationships to drivers may be important to identifying and understanding issues beyond the scope of empirical studies. Rapid increases in available data and developments in statistics and computing power allow these patterns to be identified and analyzed. We try to understand principles that govern community structure and functioning by analyzing "big data", developing models to explain and predict how individual, populations, and communities grow, and carrying out meta-analyses to put our field work into the larger context of ecological research.
Related Articles (* indicate mentored undergraduate author, ** indicates mentored graduate student author)
Tolman, E. R.. Beatty, C. D., Bush, J., Kohli, M., Frandsen, P. B., Gosnell, J. S., and Ware, J. L. 2023. Exploring chromosome evolution in 250 million year old groups of dragonflies and damselflies (Insecta:Odonata). Molecular Biology 32:21.
Goodman, A., Tolman, E. R., Dike, R. U., Abbott, J., Breinholt, J., Bybee, S., Frandsen, P. B., Gosnell, J. S.,... and Ware, J. L. 2023. Assessment of targeted enrichment locus capture across time and museum using Odonate specimens. Insect Systematics and Diversity 7:3.
Zhu, J.**, Gosnell, J. S., Akallal, L.*, and Goltsman, M.* Fear changes traits and increases survival: a meta-analysis evaluating the efficacy of antipredator training in captive-rearing programs. Restoration Ecology 31:3.
Management Connections
Given that biodiversity has many impacts on humans (and vice versa), we seek out opportunities to directly translate our research to conservation and management contexts. Beyond yielding practical results, addressing management questions also often offers unique chances for ecological insight. In the past we have conducted work on the emerging Kellet's whelk fishery in California.
Current connections to our field work include collaborating with the Billion Oyster Project in their efforts to reintroduce oysters to New York Harbor, and our work in Jamaica Bay (in collaboration with Dr. Chester Zarnoch) offers insight on how salt marsh restorations may be best managed in urban sites. Our quantitative work also contributes to large-scale analysis of how restoration and management efforts may be enhanced.
Related Articles (* indicate mentored undergraduate author, ** indicates mentored graduate student author)
Gosnell, J.S., Xochitl, C., Whited, D., Chiu, J.*, Huie, S., Zacherl, D., and White, C. 2023. Length-weight relationship of the kelp forest gastropod and emerging fisheries species Kellet’s whelk, Kelletia kelletii. Journal of Shellfish Research 42:3.