A5032740717- Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Plant and animal studies
- Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies
- Marine and fisheries research
- Species Distribution and Climate Change
- Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
- Marine Bivalve and Aquaculture Studies
- Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies
- Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
- Forest ecology and management
- Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models
- Isotope Analysis in Ecology
- Genetic diversity and population structure
- Marine and coastal plant biology
- Forest Management and Policy
- Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Coastal and Marine Dynamics
- Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock
- Conservation, Ecology, Wildlife Education
- Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
- Fault Detection and Control Systems
- Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Industrial Vision Systems and Defect Detection
- Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration
National University of Singapore
2015-2024
Queen's University Belfast
2010-2014
University College London
2010
Ecosystems with alternative stable states (ASS) may shift discontinuously from one state to another as environmental parameters cross a threshold. Reversal can then be difficult due hysteresis effects. This contrasts continuous changes in response changing parameters, which are less reverse. Worldwide degradation of coral reefs, involving "phase shifts" algal dominance, highlights the pressing need determine likelihood discontinuous phase shifts contrast no ASS. However, there is little...
Coral-algal phase shifts in which coral cover declines to low levels and is replaced by algae have often been documented on reefs worldwide. This has motivated reef management responses that include restriction regulation of fishing, e.g. herbivorous fish species. However, there evidence eutrophication sedimentation can be at least as important a reduction herbivory causing shifts. These threats arise from coastal development leading increased nutrient sediment loads, stimulate algal growth...
AbstractA goal of ecology is to identify the stabilizing mechanisms that maintain species diversity in face competitive exclusion and drift. For tropical forest tree communities, it has been hypothesized high maintained via Janzen-Connell effects, whereby host-specific natural enemies prevent any one from becoming too abundant. Here we explore plausibility this hypothesis with theoretical models. We confirm a previous result when added model drift but no exclusion-that is, neutral where...
MacArthur and Wilson's theory of island biogeography predicts that species richness should increase with area. This prediction generally holds among large islands, but small islands often varies independently area, producing the so-called ‘small-island effect’ an overall biphasic species–area relationship (SAR). Here, we develop a unified explains SAR. Our theory's key postulate is as area increases, total number immigrants increases faster than niche diversity. A parsimonious mechanistic...
Abstract Symbiotic nitrogen (N)‐fixing trees can provide large quantities of new N to ecosystems, but only if they are sufficiently abundant. The overall abundance and latitudinal distributions N‐fixing well characterised in the Americas, less outside Americas. Here, we a network forest plots spanning five continents, ~5,000 tree species ~4 million trees. majority (86%) were America or Asia. In addition, examined whether observed pattern was correlated with mean annual temperature...
The worldwide decline of coral reefs threatens the livelihoods coastal communities and puts at risk valuable ecosystem services provided by reefs. There is a pressing need for robust predictions potential futures reef associated human systems under alternative management scenarios. Understanding predicting dynamics regional scales tens to hundreds kilometers imperative, because are connected physical socioeconomic processes across regions often international boundaries. We present spatially...
Abstract Shephard, S., Fung, T., Houle, J. E., Farnsworth, K. D., Reid, D. G., and Rossberg, A. G. 2012. Size-selective fishing drives species composition in the Celtic Sea. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: 223–234. Fishing alters community size structure by selectively removing larger individual fish changing relative abundance different-sized species. To assess importance individual- species-level effects, two indices were compared, large individuals (large indicator, LFI) LSI). The...
Ecological communities are subjected to stochasticity in the form of demographic and environmental variance. Stochastic models that contain only variance (neutral models) provide close quantitative fits observed species-abundance distributions (SADs) but substantially underestimate temporal fluctuations. To a holistic assessment whether with perform better than neutral models, fit both SADs fluctuations at same time has be tested quantitatively. In this study, we quantitatively test how...
Public concern over biodiversity loss is often rationalized as a threat to ecosystem functioning, but biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) relations are hard empirically quantify at large scales. We use realistic marine food-web model, resolving species five trophic levels, study how total fish production changes with richness. This complex model predicts that BEF relations, on average, follow simple Michaelis-Menten curves when randomly deleted. These shaped mainly by release of from...
MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout JournalEditorsTheme Sections 484:155-171 (2013) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps10305 Why size structure of marine communities can require decades recover from fishing Tak Fung1,*, Keith D. Farnsworth1, Samuel Shephard2, David G. Reid3, Axel Rossberg1,4 1Queen's University Belfast, School Biological Sciences, Belfast BT9 7BL, UK...
Abstract Fung, T., Farnsworth, K. D., Reid, D. G., Rossberg, A. G. 2012. Recent data suggest no further recovery in North Sea Large Fish Indicator. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: 235–239. We detail the calculations Indicator values for 2009–2011, demonstrating an apparent stall recovery. Therefore, to Strategy Framework Directive's good environmental status 0.3 by 2020 deadline now looks less certain and may take longer than was expected using from 2006 2008.
The estimation of population allele frequencies using sample data forms a central component studies in genetics. These estimates can be used to test hypotheses on the evolutionary processes governing changes genetic variation among populations. However, existing frequently do not account for sampling uncertainty these estimates, thus compromising their utility. Incorporation this has been hindered by lack method constructing confidence intervals containing frequencies, general case from...
Abstract How many species have gone extinct in modern times before being described by science? To answer this question, and thereby get a full assessment of humanity's impact on biodiversity, statistical methods that quantify undetected extinctions are required. Such been developed recently, but they limited their reliance parametric assumptions; specifically, assume the pools extant decay exponentially, whereas real detection rates vary temporally with survey effort extinction waxing waning...
Abstract Management of biological invasions and conservation activity in the fight against habitat fragmentation both require information on how ongoing dispersal organisms is affected by environment. However, there are few landscape genetic computer programs that map resistance to at small spatiotemporal scales. To facilitate such analyses, we present an r package named ResDisMapper for mapping scales, without need prior knowledge environmental features or intensive computation. Based...
Ecosystem dynamics can exhibit large, nonlinear changes after small in an environmental parameter that passes a critical threshold. These regime shifts are often associated with loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Because thresholds for hard to determine precision, some recent studies have focused on deriving signals from leading up the thresholds. Models these depend using noise terms independent system parameters variables add stochasticity. However, demographic stochasticity,...