Every year, the Eastern North Pacific population of blue whales migrates between their winter calving grounds off the coast of Mexico and their summer feeding grounds in the California coastal region. Scientists know that they time their migration to coincide with peak prey abundances, but the cues they use for this have been unknown—until now…. Read more »
In 2018, M. Jake Vander Zanden and Yvonne Vadeboncoeur were invited to give a plenary lecture at the International Society for Limnology (SIL) meeting in Nanjing, China. They spoke about their efforts to synthesize a more holistic understanding of the role of benthic productivity and food web pathways in lakes. The two began their journey… Read more »
In 2017, the LTER Network saw the addition of three new marine and coastal sites. The new sites—Northeast U.S. Shelf (NES), Northern Gulf of Alaska (NGA) and Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems (BLE)—are all well-represented among the 41 talks and posters presented by LTER researchers at the 2020 AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting. Presentations from these and other… Read more »
A 16-year time series of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus at Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory at the Northeast U.S. Shelf LTER illustrates a regular seasonal pattern of Syn as well as daily dynamics.
Credit: Jack Pearce via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)Species that are abundant often go ignored by conservation planning until an acute threat to their populations emerge – and by then, sometimes it’s too late. According to a new article in the journal Ecosphere, common species are often critically important as structural, dominant, or foundation species in… Read more »
It stands to reason that variable environmental conditions would support greater plant diversity, but few experiments have offered concrete support for the “environmental heterogeneity hypothesis.” In re-establishing tallgrass prairie, the correlation took over 15 years to emerge.
Researchers at Mo’orea LTER did not observe evidence that corals acclimatize to ocean acidification, but they did observe that some are more sensitive to it than others.
Human introverts aren’t the only ones who get stressed in shared social environments. Lizards like patchy and spread out shaded spaces where they can avoid interactions with other lizards.
There is a surprising connection between the loss of prairie habitat in the Great Plains and the fate of Monarch butterflies. They may not be iconic in the American West, but Monarchs are important pollinators and prey for other species – and their populations in the United States are in steep decline. This is due… Read more »
As part of their current project, researchers at MCM LTER are writing a detailed study on the environmental history of the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The monograph will be available online and published as a book with an academic press. For more information visit the McMurdo Dry Valleys History website.
