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Biomedical subjects

J Roughgarden

Publications and source records attributed to J Roughgarden.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2003

Climate change, human impacts, and the resilience of coral reefs.

The diversity, frequency, and scale of human impacts on coral reefs are increasing to the extent that reefs are threatened globally. Projected increases in carbon dioxide and temperature over the next 50 years exceed the conditions under which coral reefs have flourished over the past half-million years. However, reefs will change rather than disappear entirely, with some species already showing far greater tolerance to climate change and coral bleaching than others. International integration of management strategies that support reef resilience need to be vigorously implemented, and complemented by strong policy decisions to reduce the rate of global warming.

Adaptation, Biological↗
PubMed1998

Aggregate community properties and the strength of species' interactions.

Although humanity depends on the continued, aggregate functioning of natural ecosystems, few studies have explored the impact of community structure on the stability of aggregate community properties. Here we derive the stability of the aggregate property of community biomass as a function of species' competition coefficients for a two-species model. The model predicts that the stability of community biomass is relatively independent of the magnitude of the interaction strengths. Instead, the degree of asymmetry of the interactions appears to be key to community stability.

Animals↗
PubMed1996

Why fisheries collapse and what to do about it.

With the collapse of fisheries in many parts of the world causing widespread economic harm, attention is focused on a possible cause and remedy of fishery collapse. Economic theory for managing a renewable resource, such as a fishery, leads to an ecologically unstable equilibrium as difficult to maintain as balancing a marble on top of a dome. A fishery should be managed for ecological stability instead--in the analogy, as easy to maintain as keeping a marble near the base of a bowl. The goal of ecological stability is achieved if the target stock is above that producing maximum sustainable yield and harvested at less than the maximum sustainable yield. The cost of managing for ecological stability, termed "natural insurance," is low if the fishery is sufficiently productive. This cost is shown to pay for itself over the long term in a variable and uncertain environment. An ecologically stable target stock may be attained either with annually variable quotas following current practice or, preferably, through a market mechanism whereby fish are taxed at dockside if caught when the stock was below target and are untaxed otherwise. In this regulatory environment, the goal of maximizing short-term revenue coincides with the goal of ecological stability, thereby also maximizing long-term revenue. This new approach to fishery management is illustrated with the recently collapsed Newfoundland fishing industry. The Newfoundland cod fishery is expected to rebuild to an ecologically stable level in about 9 years and thereafter support an annual harvest of about 75% of the 1981-1990 average.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1988

Recruitment dynamics in complex life cycles.

Organisms living in the marine rocky intertidal zone compete for space. This, together with predation, physical disruption, and differing species tolerances to physiological stress, explains the structure of the ecological communities at some sites. At other sites the supply of larvae is limiting, and events in the offshore waters, such as wind-driven upwelling, explain the composition of intertidal communities. Whether the community ecology at a site is governed by adult-adult interactions within the site, or by limitations to the supply of larvae reaching the site, is determined by the regional pattern of circulation in the coastal waters. Models combining larval circulation with adult interactions can potentially forecast population fluctuations. These findings illustrate how processes in different ecological habitats are coupled.

Animals↗
PubMed1985

Larval settlement rate: A leading determinant of structure in an ecological community of the marine intertidal zone.

Field studies demonstrate that the population structure of the barnacle Balanus glandula differs between locations of high and low larval settlement rate. These observations, together with results from a model for the demography of an open, space-limited population, suggest that the settlement rate may be a more important determinant of rocky intertidal community structure than is presently realized. Locations with a low larval settlement rate exhibit a generally low abundance of barnacles that varies slightly within years and greatly between years, reflecting yearly differences in settlement. Locations with a high-settlement rate exhibit a generally high abudance of barnacles. However, the abundance varies greatly within years with a significant oscillatory component (period, 30 weeks) and only slightly between years regardless of yearly differences in settlement. At the low-settlement location mortality of barnacles is independent of the area occupied by barnacles. At the high-settlement location mortality is cover-dependent due to increased predation by starfish on areas of high barnacle cover. In both locations the cover-independent component of mortality does not vary with age during the first 60 weeks. As assumed in the demographic model, the kinetics of larval settlement can be described as a process in which the rate of settlement to a quadrat is proportional to the fraction of vacant space within the quadrat. Generalizations that the highest species diversity in a rocky intertidal community is found at locations of intermediate disturbance, and that competition causes zonation between species of the barnacle genera Balanus and Chthamalus, seem to apply only to locations with high-settlement rates.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1985

Evolution in a metapopulation with space-limited subpopulations.

A model for the dynamics of a metapopulation with space-limited subpopulations (Roughgarden & Iwasa, 1985) is extended to include genetic variation for life-history traits. The traits include those expressed by the sessile adults in the space-limited subpopulations and traits expressed by the dispersing larvae. Conditions for increase of a new allele at a single locus are derived using two formulations, one that omits, and one that includes, age-structure among the sessile adults. From both formulations a criterion indicating the general direction of evolutionary change is derived: a new allele enters the population if it increases the average productivity of larvae from the subpopulations relative to the larval mortality rate, where the average is computed by weighting the productivity from each subpopulation by the amount of unoccupied space in it. This criterion may offer a start towards a theory for the evolution of life histories appropriate to the population structure of sessile marine invertebrates with pelagic larvae. In particular, the basal area of a sessile adult in a population with space-limited recruitment is a selectively neutral character.

Animals↗