Meeting Abstract

S10.1  Wednesday, Jan. 6  Ecosystem Engineering in the Marine Realm BERKE, Sarah K; Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD skberke@gmail.com

Ecologists have long known that certain organisms fundamentally modify, create, or define habitats by altering the habitat’s physical properties. In the past decade, these processes have been formally defined as ‘ecosystem engineering’. This definition has alternately been lauded as a fundamental advance in ecological theory and derided as the unwarranted introduction of an overly general buzzword. Despite this vigorous initial controversy, the emerging consensus is that ecosystem engineering is indeed a fundamental class of ecological interactions occurring in most, if not all, ecosystems. In the marine realm, ecosystem engineers such as seagrasses, seaweeds, oysters, and tube-building or burrowing infauna occur across an enormous range of habitats, from the tropics to the sub-arctic, from sheltered muds to wave-exposed rocks, from the high intertidal to deep-sea vents. What, if any, commonalities unify these diverse systems? What aspects of morphology, physiology, life-history, and ecology are most critical in making an ecosystem engineer? After reviewing the origins and development of the ecosystem engineering concept, I will survey the major groups of marine ecosystem engineers with an eye towards establishing commonalities among them as well as drawing broad comparisons between marine and terrestrial ecosystem engineering processes.