Biological Sciences
Stephen Bollens
Food Web Structure and the Ecological Function of Aquatic Habitats
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Dr. Bollens is an oceanographer and ecologist concerned with how aquatic food webs – including fish, invertebrates, and microbes – are structured and how they function. Of particular interest and concern are the effects of various anthropogenic influences, such as non-indigenous species, climate change, and commercial fisheries on food web dynamics. For instance, with regard to non-indigenous species (sometimes also known as introduced or invasive species), Bollens and colleagues have studied the ecology of Pseudodiaptomus inopinus, an Asian copepod (a tiny crustacean) introduced into several river estuaries in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, which is hypothesized to have influenced the lower food web dynamics in these ecosystems. Yet another invasive copepod, Tortanus dextrilobatus, was shown by Bollens and colleagues to have invaded the San Francisco estuary and to have become an important predator of zooplankton, which may in turn have adversely affected higher trophic level consumers such as fish and birds. Further studies of the ecological interactions between non-indigenous and native aquatic species, including the implications for ecosystem productivity, will continue to be a major focus of Dr. Bollens’ research program.
Another area of active research for Dr. Bollens’ is the structure and function of food webs on commercially important fisheries grounds, such as Georges Bank, in the Northwest Atlantic. Here a large interdisciplinary project entitled Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC), jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is examining the effects of environmental variability generally, and global climate change specifically, on predator-prey dynamics within Georges Bank. One of the more novel and interesting findings by Bollens and colleagues has been the discovery of huge numbers of hydroids, usually found attached to the bottom of the sea, suspended in the upper water column, where they served as voracious predators on young fish and plankton.
Finally, the restoration ecology of tidal wetlands in urbanized areas is a more recent focus of Dr. Bollens’ research. For instance, several areas of tidal wetlands in the San Francisco estuary that were previously used for agriculture are currently being “restored,” with preliminary results indicating that fish and invertebrates quickly re-colonize such areas, although the eventual food web structure and ecological function of such restored wetlands are not yet known. Moreover, native and non-indigenous species seem to show differential responses to these wetland restoration practices. All of these studies have in common an attempt to bridge the gap between basic biological sciences (such as behavior, population dynamics, and community ecology)
and the more applied environmental sciences (such as invasion biology, fisheries oceanography, and restoration ecology) to address environmental
issues of pressing societal concerns.
Contact
Information
Stephen Bollens, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Biological Sciences
Washington State University Vancouver
14204 N.E. Salmon Creek Ave
Vancouver, WA 98686-9788
Telephone: 360-546-9116
E-mail: bollens@vancouver.wsu.edu |
