Osenberg Lab

Jeff Shima leads a team of collaborators from New Zealand, Australia and the US, working on life histories and populations dynamics of Thalassoma hardwicke.  This is the inaugural paper from the Marsden grant that funds the work (and took great advantage of samples collected during Jeff’s and Craig’s earlier NSF research on cryptic density dependence).

Click here for link to online version at Theoretical Ecology

Dan Hawkins joined the lab and will be working at Sapelo Island this summer along with Rebecca Atkins.  Dan is working towards his MS in Ecology and is developing a thesis on marsh ecology — his work will complement the research being done by Rebecca as part of her dissertation.  Dan graduated from Creighton University Read More …

Jing graduated from UF in April.  Her mother and father came out from China to help celebrate and to help her prepare for her new post-doc at Michigan State University with Scott Peacor and Jim Bence.   We’ll going to miss Jing and her smile, but look forward to hearing about her new work on Great Read More …

Rebecca was invited to write an article on her integration of science and art.  Her piece (“Science and Art: A Mutualism”) was just published in Fisheries (link here).  The article features a variety of her art, as well as her article.  It was so beautiful that Fisheries put her artwork on the cover (see image Read More …

Cecilia and Anya wrote up a “Working Life” editorial for Science giving their perspectives on forming the Women in Science organization at UGA (aka WiSci; which is pronounced “Why Psi” and not “whiskey”, by the way).  Congratulation to Cecilia and Anya and all of WiSci!

Abstract Environmental stressors often interact, but most studies of multiple stressors have focused on combinations of abiotic stressors.  Here we examined the potential interaction between a biotic stressor, the vermetid snail Ceraesignum maximum, and an abiotic stressor, high sedimentation, on the growth of reef-building corals. In a field experiment, we subjected juvenile massive Porites corals Read More …

Elizabeth defended her dissertation last week in the Odum School of Ecology at UGA (Multi-scale spatial patterning of corals and their symbionts).  Many thanks to her co-advisor (Scott McKinley, Tulane University) and her committee (Andrew Park and Jim Porter) for all of their support and insights.  Elizabeth is heading off to an exciting post-doc with Read More …

Jing successfully defended her dissertation (Effects of movement in human-influenced marine systems) on March 16/17 at the University of Florida.  Many thanks to her co-advisor (Sergei Pilyugin) and her committee (Jeremy Lichstein, Bob Holt and Tom Frazer) for all of their support and insights.  Jing has received several post-doctoral offers and will soon be heading Read More …

Abstract Foraging theory posits that isolation from refuge habitat within a landscape increases perceived predation risk and, thus, suppresses the foraging behavior of prey species. However, these effects may depend fundamentally on resource availability, which could affect prey boldness and can change considerably through bottom-up processes. We conducted a field survey and experiment in a Read More …

Adrian’s paper (collaborative with Ben and me, especially Ben!) was published online at Ecosphere.  We illustrate, using simulations and two case studies, how within-patch sample size affects beta diversity, and we propose a form of rarefaction to control for variation among sites (or treatments) due to sampling effects.

Our paper on the “progressive-change BACIPS” design was just published in MEE. This paper had a long ontogeny, starting with Laetititia’s visit to my lab to help guide her analyses of the Moorea MPA data.  She and I developed the PC-BACIPS approach for those early analyses.  Lauric then joined Joachim’s lab and initiated this simulation-based Read More …

Mike’s paper on effects of sediments, nutrients and fishes was published in Coral Reefs.  This paper was collaborative with our colleagues at CRIOBE and provides an experimental evaluation of the effects of the three factors on corals and macro-algae.

Jing’s paper on movement and its effect on trophic cascades inside marine protected areas was just published online in Ecosphere. Abstract The protection of predators inside marine reserves is expected to generate trophic cascades with predator density increasing but prey density decreasing; however, predators and prey often both increase inside reserves. This mismatch between the Read More …

Our paper on the die-off of the vermetid gastropod, C. maximum, is available online at Coral Reefs.  In this paper, we document the sudden and complete extirpation of C. maximum on Mo’orea.  We provide preliminary evidence that the die-off was likely even more widespread that just Mo’orea — our recent (July 2016) surveys show that Read More …

Science is central to our lives, but there are more important things… congratulations to Lianne and Phillip, Paula and Norbert, Adrian and Blake, and Elizabeth and Jesse on their upcoming (or recent!) weddings (or elopements).  Well done!

Adrian Stier has accepted a faculty position at UC Santa Barbara [he completed his PhD in the Osenberg lab in 2012 and went on to post-docs at UBC, NCEAS/NOAA, and UW].  He starts this fall in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology.  Congratulations Adrian!