Marsh crabs build creeks!
Some very cool new research has come out of the Pennings Lab at the University of Houston last month. Huy Vu et al reports, in Ecology, that purple marsh crabs…
Trophic Cascades from HHMI
HHMI made this amazing video about trophic cascades a few weeks ago. I HIGHLY recommend watching this. Featuring kings of ecology Jim Estes and Bob Paine http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/some-animals-are-more-equal-others-keystone-species-and-trophic-cascades Like the video…
Check out this parasitoid!
We are slowly working our way through insect samples from salt marshes around New England and our undergrad Martina found something pretty insane recently. The following picture is of a…
MarshChat with Gina Wimp!
We just had another awesome MarshChat, this time with Dr Gina Wimp from Georgetown! Gina is a fantastic ecologist who focuses on the effects of changes (i.e. fragmentation, nutrients) on the…
Reblog: Crab Wars
Dr Sarah Oktay of our UMass Boston Field Station on Nantucket and I wrote an article for Yesterday's Island, a Nantucket newspaper, that was published last week. Enjoy!
How important are cross ecosystem interactions in a marsh?
Because of their location on the border of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, marshes act as sponges for runoff, are a factory that churns out millions of juvenile fish, crabs and…
Purple Marsh Crab Grazing…during the day…at high tide!
Well I have never seen this before... This video features the purple marsh crab, Sesarma reticulatum. This crab is a well known marsh herbivore (actually omnivore!) that feeds on aboveground…
Workin on my night marsh
Look who I found eating some grass out at Folgers Marsh outside UMass Boston's Field Station on Nantucket! Thats right, your friendly neighborhood purple marsh crab. Some…
The Frozen Marsh: a story about insulation
All of New England is covered in a thick layer of ice and snow at the moment. And that makes it a perfect time to see what is going on…
High tide marsh life
If you live anywhere near the coast you may have noticed that this most recent full moon has yielded some very high tides. In fact, Morrissey Boulevard, where UMass Boston…