Traditional perspectives on nutrient limitation suggest that a single nutrient (e.g., nitrogen [N] or phosphorus [P]) typically limits the growth of primary producers such as plants, seaweeds, and phytoplankton. More recent work suggests that multiple nutrients (e.g., N and P together) may simultaneously limit growth. For example, one nutrient may be necessary for acquisition of…

Recent work in the Bracken Lab highlights the top-down (i.e., consumptive) and bottom-up (i.e., recycling) roles that grazers play in intertidal systems and shows how community composition mediates the relative importance of grazers’ top-down and bottom-up roles (Bracken et al. in press). Using a classic grazer-seaweed system on New England rocky shores, we show that…

The Marine Biodiversity Lab, formerly based at Northeastern University‘s Marine Science Center in Nahant, Massachusetts, is transitioning to the west coast, where Matt has started a new faculty position in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. Work over the next year or so will involve finishing up projects in New England, but…