Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 17, Issue 4, Pages 475-483Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ele.12247
Keywords
ocean acidification; climate change; historical comparison; competitive dominance; intertidal community ecology; CCA; competitive networks; Coralline algae
Categories
Funding
- United States National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (NSF DDIG) [DEB-1110412]
- Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation
- Phycological Society of America
- Geological Society of America
- University of Chicago Hinds Fund
- NSF [DEB-09-19420, OCE-09-28232]
- United States Government
- National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship [32 CFR 168a]
- United States National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) [1144082]
- DoD
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [0919420] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Graduate Education
- Direct For Education and Human Resources [1144082] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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As the ocean environment changes over time, a paucity of long-term data sets and historical comparisons limits the exploration of community dynamics over time in natural systems. Here, we used a long-term experimental data set to present evidence for a reversal of competitive dominance within a group of crustose coralline algae (CCA) from the 1980s to present time in the northeast Pacific Ocean. CCA are cosmopolitan species distributed globally, and dominant space holders in intertidal and subtidal systems. Competition experiments showed a markedly lower competitive ability of the previous competitively dominant species and a decreased response of competitive dynamics to grazer presence. Competitive networks obtained from survey data showed concordance between the 1980s and 2013, yet also revealed reductions in interaction strengths across the assemblage. We discuss the potential role of environmental change, including ocean acidification, in altered ecological dynamics in this system.
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