skip to main content


Search for: All records

Creators/Authors contains: "Buckley, L."

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. Projecting ecological and evolutionary responses to variable and changing environments is central to anticipating and managing impacts to biodiversity and ecosystems. Current model- ing approaches are largely phenomenological and often fail to accurately project responses due to numerous biological processes at multiple levels of biological organization responding to environmental variation at varied spatial and temporal scales. Limited mechanistic under- standing of organismal responses to environmental variability and extremes also restricts predictive capacity. We outline a strategy for identifying and modeling the key organismal mechanisms across levels of biological organization that mediate ecological and evolutionary responses to environmental variation. A central component of this strategy is quantifying timescales and magnitudes of climatic variability and how organisms experience them. We highlight recent empirical research that builds this information and suggest how to design future experiments that can produce more generalizable principles. We discuss how to create biologically informed projections in a feasible way by combining statistical and mechanistic approaches. Predictions will inform both fundamental and practical questions at the interface of ecology, evolution, and Earth science such as how organisms experience, adapt to, and respond to environmental variation at multiple hierarchical spatial and temporal scales. 
    more » « less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available June 30, 2024
  2. Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) was first observed in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) in January 2019. This disease affects at least 20 scleractinian coral species; however, it is not well understood how reef diversity affects its spread or its impacts on reef ecosystems. With a large number of susceptible species, SCTLD may not follow the diversity-disease hypothesis, which proposes that high species diversity is negatively correlated with disease prevalence. Instead, SCTLD may have a higher prevalence and a greater impact on reefs with higher coral diversity. To test this, in 2020 we resampled 54 sites around St. Thomas previously surveyed in 2017 or 2019 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Coral Reef Monitoring Program. These sites represented a variety of species diversity values [categorized into poor (<12 spp. rich.) and rich (12 spp. rich.)] in multiple disease zones (Endemic: disease present  9 months; Epidemic: disease present 2–6 months; Control and Emergent: disease present no disease/<2 months). We hypothesized that, contrary to the diversity-disease hypothesis, sites with high species diversity (as measured by species richness or Simpson’s index) would have higher disease prevalence within the epidemic zone, and that high species diversity sites would have a greater impact from disease within the endemic zone. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between disease prevalence and diversity in the epidemic zone, and a similar trend in the endemic zones. Additionally, a negative relationship was seen between pre-outbreak diversity and loss of diversity and coral cover within the endemic zone. This supports the hypothesis that higher diversity predicts greater disease impact and suggests that SCTLD does not follow the diversity-disease hypothesis. Within the epidemic zone, the species with the highest SCTLD prevalence were Dendrogyra cylindrus, Colpophyllia natans, and Meandrina meandrites, while in the endemic zone, Diploria labyrinthiformis, Pseudodiploria strigosa, Montastraea cavernosa, and Siderastrea siderea had the highest SCTLD prevalence. Understanding the relationship between species diversity and SCTLD will help managers predict the most vulnerable reefs, which should be prioritized within the USVI and greater Caribbean region. 
    more » « less