Carol Blanchette

Last updated
Carol Blanchette
Alma materOregon State University
Scientific career
Thesis The effects of biomechanical and ecological factors on population and community structure of wave-exposed, intertidal macroalgae  (1994)

Carol Anne Blanchette is research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who is known for her work on marine intertidal zones and the biomechanics of marine organisms.

Contents

Education and career

Blanchette grew up in New Jersey and describes her lifelong interest with biology and science as a result of early interactions with her grandparents about fish and fishing. [1] Blanchette has a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame (1988) and earned her Ph.D. in 1994 from Oregon State University. [2] Following her Ph.D. she moved to California where she was first a postdoctoral scientist at Hopkins Marine Station and then later because a research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. [1] From 2000 until 2019, Blanchette was one of the principal investigators for the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) where she led the team working on intertidal community ecology and biomechanics, [3] and served as the science and policy coordinator. [2] In 2016 Blanchette was named director of the Valentine Eastern Sierra Reserve. [4] [5]

Research

Blanchette is known for her work on topics including biomechanics, intertidal ecology, and climate change. Blanchette's early research examined variability in where plants settle on rocky seashores [6] and how plants survives waves on rocky seashores. [7] She has worked on factors defining trophic cascades [8] [9] and the distribution of species such as mussels [10] and other benthic organisms [11] that are found in intertidal zones. She has worked on the loss of starfish, sea star wasting disease, along the western coast of the United States. [12] [13] By 2016 the sea stars were returning to the Oregon coast, and mirrored what Blanchette and her colleagues saw for recovery of sea stars in California. [14] Blanchette's work also examines ocean acidification [15] and the impact of climate change [16] on marine intertidal zones.

Selected publications

Awards and honors

In 2012 Blanchette was honored by the United States' Department of the Interior for her work with the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO). [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biological interaction</span> Effect that organisms have on other organisms

In ecology, a biological interaction is the effect that a pair of organisms living together in a community have on each other. They can be either of the same species, or of different species. These effects may be short-term, or long-term, both often strongly influence the adaptation and evolution of the species involved. Biological interactions range from mutualism, beneficial to both partners, to competition, harmful to both partners. Interactions can be direct when physical contact is established or indirect, through intermediaries such as shared resources, territories, ecological services, metabolic waste, toxins or growth inhibitors. This type of relationship can be shown by net effect based on individual effects on both organisms arising out of relationship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tide pool</span> Rocky pool on a seashore, separated from the sea at low tide, filled with seawater

A tide pool or rock pool is a shallow pool of seawater that forms on the rocky intertidal shore. These pools typically range from a few inches to a few feet deep and a few feet across. Many of these pools exist as separate bodies of water only at low tide, as seawater gets trapped when the tide recedes. Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. A tidal cycle is usually about 25 hours and consists of one or two high tides and two low tides.

<i>Thysanoessa raschii</i> Species of krill

Thysanoessa raschii, sometimes known as Arctic krill, is one of the most common euphausiid species of the subarctic and Arctic seas. They may reach 20–25 millimetres (0.8–1.0 in) long, and are sexually mature above 14 mm (0.6 in).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intertidal ecology</span>

Intertidal ecology is the study of intertidal ecosystems, where organisms live between the low and high tide lines. At low tide, the intertidal is exposed whereas at high tide, the intertidal is underwater. Intertidal ecologists therefore study the interactions between intertidal organisms and their environment, as well as between different species of intertidal organisms within a particular intertidal community. The most important environmental and species interactions may vary based on the type of intertidal community being studied, the broadest of classifications being based on substrates—rocky shore and soft bottom communities.

Joan Roughgarden is an American ecologist and evolutionary biologist. She has engaged in theory and observation of coevolution and competition in Anolis lizards of the Caribbean, and recruitment limitation in the rocky intertidal zones of California and Oregon. She has more recently become known for her rejection of sexual selection, her theistic evolutionism, and her work on holobiont evolution.

Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation.

Ecological traps are scenarios in which rapid environmental change leads organisms to prefer to settle in poor-quality habitats. The concept stems from the idea that organisms that are actively selecting habitat must rely on environmental cues to help them identify high-quality habitat. If either the habitat quality or the cue changes so that one does not reliably indicate the other, organisms may be lured into poor-quality habitat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dominance (ecology)</span> Measure of species ecological influence

Ecological dominance is the degree to which one or several species have a major influence controlling the other species in their ecological community or make up more of the biomass. Both the composition and abundance of species within an ecosystem can be affected by the dominant species present.

<i>Lottia gigantea</i> Species of gastropod

Lottia gigantea, common name the owl limpet, is a species of sea snail, a true limpet, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Lottiidae. Its genome has been sequenced at the Joint Genome Institute.

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<i>Fucus distichus</i> Species of alga

Fucus distichus or rockweed is a species of brown alga in the family Fucaceae to be found in the intertidal zones of rocky seashores in the Northern Hemisphere, mostly in rock pools.

<i>Fucus gardneri</i> Species of Phaeophyceae

Fucus gardneri is a species of seaweed, a brown alga living on the littoral shore of the Pacific coasts of North America. It has the common names of rockweed and bladderwrack.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Bertness</span> American ecologist

Mark D. Bertness is an American ecologist, known for his work on the community assembly of marine shoreline communities.

<i>Silvetia</i> Genus of seaweeds

Silvetia is a genus of brown algae, commonly known as rockweed, found in the intertidal zone of rocky seashores of the Pacific Ocean. These were originally classified as members of the genus Pelvetia. In 1999, Silvetia sp. was created as a separate species from Pelvetia canaliculata due to differences of oogonium structure and of nucleic acid sequences of the rDNA. It was renamed in honor of Paul Silva, Curator of Algae at the Herbarium of the University of California, Berkeley. There are three species and one subspecies.

Marti J. Anderson is an ecological statistician whose works is interdisciplinary, from marine biology and ecology to mathematical and applied statistics. Her core areas of research and expertise are: community ecology, biodiversity, multivariate analysis, resampling methods, experimental designs, and statistical models of species abundances. Based in Auckland, New Zealand, she is a Distinguished Professor in the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study at Massey University and also the Director of the New Zealand research and software-development company, PRIMER-e.

Elizabeth T. Borer is an American ecologist and a professor of ecology, Evolution and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota.

Herbivores' effects on plant diversity vary across environmental changes. Herbivores could increase plant diversity or decrease plant diversity. Loss of plant diversity due to climate change can also affect herbivore and plant community relationships

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Ballance</span> American marine scientist

Lisa Taylor Ballance is an American marine scientist who is Director Marine Mammal Institute and Endowed Chair for Marine Mammal Research at Oregon State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Facilitation cascade</span> Beneficial ecological chain reaction

A facilitation cascade is a sequence of ecological interactions that occur when a species benefits a second species that in turn has a positive effect on a third species. These facilitative interactions can take the form of amelioration of environmental stress and/or provision of refuge from predation. Autogenic ecosystem engineering species, structural species, habitat-forming species, and foundation species are associated with the most commonly recognized examples of facilitation cascades, sometimes referred to as a habitat cascades. Facilitation generally is a much broader concept that includes all forms of positive interactions including pollination, seed dispersal, and co-evolved commensalism and mutualistic relationships, such as between cnidarian hosts and symbiodinium in corals, and between algae and fungi in lichens. As such, facilitation cascades are widespread through all of the earth's major biomes with consistently positive effects on the abundance and biodiversity of associated organisms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David M. Post</span> Academic researcher

David M. Post is a research scientist and academic administrator. He is currently a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and the Vice President ., Dean of Faculty, and Visiting Wong Ngit Liong Professor at Yale-NUS College, the first liberal arts college in Singapore. Post is an aquatic ecologist who studies food webs, evolution, and stable isotopes in lakes and rivers in Connecticut and Kenya.

References

  1. 1 2 "Autobiographical sketches - Carol Anne Blanchette". Oceanography. 27 (4): 67. December 17, 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Carol Blanchette - Background". homes.msi.ucsb.edu. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  3. ↑ Menge, Bruce A.; Milligan, Kristen; Caselle, Jennifer E.; Barth, John A.; Blanchette, Carol A.; Carr, Mark H.; Chan, Francis; Cowen, Robert K.; Denny, Mark; Gaines, Steven D.; Hofmann, Gretchen E.; Kroeker, Kristy J.; Lubchenco, Jane; McManus, Margaret A.; Novak, Mark (2019). "PISCO". Oceanography. 32 (3): 16–25. doi: 10.5670/oceanog.2019.307 . ISSN   1042-8275. JSTOR   26760079. S2CID   202913440.
  4. ↑ "Dr. Carol Blanchette named new director of Valentine Reserve - Sierra Wave: Eastern Sierra NewsSierra Wave: Eastern Sierra News". 2016-01-12. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  5. ↑ Bodine, Mike (January 22, 2016). "Dawson retires, Blanchette takes over". thesheetnews.com. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  6. ↑ Blanchette, Ca; Worcester, Se; Reed, D; Holbrook, Sj (1999). "Algal morphology, flow, and spatially variable recruitment of surfgrass Phyllospadix torreyi". Marine Ecology Progress Series. 184: 119–128. doi: 10.3354/meps184119 . ISSN   0171-8630.
  7. ↑ Blanchette, Carol Anne (1997). "Size and Survival of Intertidal Plants in Response to Wave Action: A Case Study Withfucus Gardneri". Ecology. 78 (5): 1563–1578. doi:10.1890/0012-9658(1997)078[1563:SASOIP]2.0.CO;2. ISSN   0012-9658.
  8. ↑ Borer, E. T.; Seabloom, E. W.; Shurin, J. B.; Anderson, K. E.; Blanchette, C. A.; Broitman, B.; Cooper, S. D.; Halpern, B. S. (2005). "What Determines the Strength of a Trophic Cascade?". Ecology. 86 (2): 528–537. doi:10.1890/03-0816. ISSN   0012-9658.
  9. ↑ Shurin, Jonathan B.; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Anderson, Kurt; Blanchette, Carol A.; Broitman, Bernardo; Cooper, Scott D.; Halpern, Benjamin S. (2002-11-07). "A cross-ecosystem comparison of the strength of trophic cascades: Strength of cascades". Ecology Letters. 5 (6): 785–791. doi:10.1046/j.1461-0248.2002.00381.x.
  10. ↑ Blanchette, C. A.; Helmuth, B.; Gaines, S. D. (2007-01-23). "Spatial patterns of growth in the mussel, Mytilus californianus, across a major oceanographic and biogeographic boundary at Point Conception, California, USA". Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology. 340 (2): 126–148. doi:10.1016/j.jembe.2006.09.022. ISSN   0022-0981.
  11. ↑ Blanchette, Carol A.; Melissa Miner, C.; Raimondi, Peter T.; Lohse, David; Heady, Kristen E. K.; Broitman, Bernardo R. (2008). "Biogeographical patterns of rocky intertidal communities along the Pacific coast of North America". Journal of Biogeography. 35 (9): 1593–1607. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2008.01913.x . S2CID   5565088.
  12. ↑ Campbell, Katie; Ahearn, Ashley (2014-06-29). "Infectious disease cited in die-off". Statesman Journal. pp. A6. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  13. ↑ "Scientists zero in on what's causing starfish die-offs". PBS NewsHour. 2014-06-17. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  14. ↑ Akpan, Nsikan (2016-05-04). "After shocking die-off, Oregon sea stars stage an epic comeback". PBS NewsHour. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  15. ↑ Chan, F.; Barth, J. A.; Blanchette, C. A.; Byrne, R. H.; Chavez, F.; Cheriton, O.; Feely, R. A.; Friederich, G.; Gaylord, B.; Gouhier, T.; Hacker, S.; Hill, T.; Hofmann, G.; McManus, M. A.; Menge, B. A. (2017-05-31). "Persistent spatial structuring of coastal ocean acidification in the California Current System". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 2526. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-02777-y . ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   5451383 . PMID   28566727. S2CID   31158392.
  16. ↑ Broitman, B. R.; Szathmary, P. L.; Mislan, K. A. S.; Blanchette, C. A.; Helmuth, B. (2009). "Predator-prey interactions under climate change: the importance of habitat vs body temperature". Oikos. 118 (2): 219–224. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0706.2008.17075.x.
  17. ↑ "Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network Receives Conservation Award". The Santa Barbara Independent. 2012-11-11. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
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