pptx
“All Animals Weren’t Created Equal”
Robert T. Paine
Jenessa Kay
April 23, 2013
Community Ecology
Nature Education, 2012
Biographical Info
Born in Cambridge, MA – April 13,1933
Happy belated birthday!
AB - Harvard University, 1954
Army Battalion Gardener
Kinne (ed.), 1994
PhD - University of Michigan, 1961
Post-doc, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Professor of Zoology, University of Washington
1962 – 1998
Current Professor emeritus of Zoology, UW
Awards and Recognition
1979-80 – President of Ecological
Society of America
1983 – MacArthur Award (ESA)
1989 – Excellence in Ecology Prize
(Ecology Inst. in Oldendorf am Luhe,
Germany
1997 – Sewall Wright Award (Society of
American Naturalists)
2000 – Eminent Ecologist Award
Scientific American, 2010
Cited by 3652
Cited by 920
Cited by 776
Cited by 1178
BioScience, Vol. 46, No. 8 (Sep., 1996)
Cited by 1017
Research Overview
Predation Hypothesis and
Competitive Hierarchies
Food Web Interactions and
Trophic Cascades
Quantifying interaction strengths and patch dynamics
Keystone Species Concept marinebio.net
Why don’t we have monocultures of good competitors??
The New York Times, 2012
Kevin Schafer
makah.com
Study Location
Makah Bay – mainland WA
Tatoosh Island - 0.5 miles offshore from Cape Flattery
Part of Makah Reservation
Longest ongoing study of a single area by the same scientist in the U.S.
Superstock.com
Tatoosh Island
wikimedia.com
legendsofamerica.com
history.noaa.gov (1943)
“Whether I was stupid or foolhardy, I spent my first ten years in the intertidal in sneakers – cheap as possible.” scientificamerican.com
“I have too good peripheral circulation.”
The New York Times, 2012
“His intellectual presence is so commanding that his physical presence hardly registers.” naturalhistoriesproject.org
“If you ask him a question…y ou feel the weight of an encyclopedic knowledge of scientific and natural history gathering behind his response.” naturalhistoriesproject.org
“What would happen if we removed the top predator from an ecosystem?” naturalhistoriesproject.org
“You get pretty good at throwing starfish into deeper water.”
asnailodyessy.com
Nature, 2010
California Academy of Sciences
“I’ve always thought of myself as a wader due to my size.”
Kick-It-And-See Ecology
Changed ecology from an observational to an experimental science
3 years on Makah Bay
8 x 2 m plots
Removal of Pisaster ochraceus
Unmanipulated control
Transect lines to measure density of resident macroinvertebrates and benthic algae scientificamerican.com
Bruno, 2007 ppt
What Maintains Diversity?
Previously, thought diversity = ecosystem stability
“Stability increases as the number of links increase” (MacArthur,
1955)
“A rich fauna and flora…tends to be very stable because of multiplicity of ecological checks and balances”
(Watt, 1964)
Paine – absence of one individual can shift entire population into monoculture
Species richness decreased from
15 to 8 online.santarosa.edu
Nature Education, 2010
Paine, 1966
3 Pages That Changed the World (of Ecology)
Loss can initiate trophic cascades: the rise and fall of connected species throughout the food web
Type of Keystones
Predators – Sea Otters, Gray Wolves
Prey
Mutualists – hummingbirds
Hosts – Saguaro cactus
Parasites
Modifiers – N. American Beaver
Pollinators
Where does it end?
Challenges include context dependency and diversity dictating keystone status
1994 – United Nations’ Global Biodiversity
Assessment met to identify issues and challenges with keystone species concept
9 “keystone cops” including Paine, Tilman,
Mary Power, Bruce Menge
Written as discussion between “Dr. Knowitall,”
“Empiricist” and “Skeptic”
A keystone species is one that has a disproportionately large effect on its environment relative to its abundance, size or biomass
Goodness gracious, it’s Pisaster ochraceus
Marian Kohn, 1999 (Nature, 2013)
Drawing from 1999
Paul Dayton
Jane Lubchenco
Bruce Menge
Steve Palumbi
Paine = a Keystone
The New York Times, 2012
Questions?
sfbbo.org
References
Mills, L. Scott, Michael E. Soule, and Daniel F. Doak. "The keystone-species concept in ecology and conservation." BioScience 43.4 (1993): 219-224.
Levin, Simon A., and Robert T. Paine. "Disturbance, patch formation, and community structure." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 71.7 (1974): 2744-2747.
Paine, Robert T. "Food web complexity and species diversity." American Naturalist (1966): 65-75.
Paine, Robert T. "A note on trophic complexity and community stability." The American Naturalist 103.929
(1969): 91-93.
Paine, Robert T. "Food webs: linkage, interaction strength and community infrastructure." Journal of
Animal Ecology 49.3 (1980): 667-685.
Paine, Robert T. "A conversation on refining the concept of keystone species."Conservation Biology 9.4 (1995): 962-
964.
Paine, Robert T., et al. "Trouble on oiled waters: lessons from the Exxon Valdez oil spill." Annual Review
of Ecology and Systematics (1996): 197-235.
Power, Mary E., et al. "Challenges in the quest for keystones." BioScience46.8 (1996): 609-620.
