Research Interests:

I am particularly interested in the overlap between community and ecosystem ecology, notably how community interactions like competition can influence ecosystem processes like nutrient cycling, and how processes like nutrient cycling can affect community structure.

 

Current Projects:

1. Marine food webs are conventionally considered to be detritus-based. These systems also often have abundant algal and diatom species, albeit at significantly lower availability than detrital food sources. It has been proposed that the low availability of algal resources is due to herbivore consumption, that herbivores prefer and thus rapidly deplete this food source and are then forced to shift to the more widely available detritus. Such a preference would assume that a diatomaceous diet is preferable over a detritus-based one, either due to higher energy or nutrient content. As such, we are evaluating the dietary value of both detritus and diatom food sources, as measured by the relative growth of three snail species: Littoraria irrorata, Ilyanassa obsoleta, and Melampus coffeus. We are also including analyses of the differences in carbon isotope enrichment conferred by each diet, and how these compare to isotope signatures in natural systems.

Upcoming Projects

• A broad collaborative nutrient manipulation study in salt marshes, involving the addition of various combinations of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. This study also incorporates grazer exclusion, and seeks to evaluate changes in plant species composition and productivity due to resource limitation and top-down controls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chase Mason

Contact Information:

409 Carr Hall

Univ. of Florida

Gainesville, FL 32611

Email: chaz816@ufl.edu