Student-centered mentorship in marine field ecology
An import aspect of my research program is that the majority of my work is done in the context of mentoring programs focused on the development of the next generation of diverse scientists. Of my 27 publications, my co-authors include 25 undergraduate students and six graduate students- a model I plan to continue. I am particularly proud of my ability to support a broad range of research interests through my mentorship of underrepresented minority in STEM. Overall, these projects relate to community ecology, and I am currently supporting four additional student-driven projects on the path to eventual publication.
How do anthropogenic stressors influence the resilience of ecological communities?
Multiple stressors, interactions, and nonlinear outcomes as drivers of “ecological surprises”
Multiple stressors acting simultaneously have become the new norm for ecological communities and will increase in the Anthropocene. Nonlinear interactions among these stressors are challenging to predict, and their commonality may explain the recent prevalence of “ecological surprises” and phase shifts across a diversity of ecological communities. I focus on interactions between local, manageable stressors with an emphasis on predicting ecological surprises.
Coral reefs have globally shifted to algal dominance, and I study these shifted, degraded states to expand our limited understanding of these emergent communities and the processes driving them. I am particularly focused on how stressor application erodes the resistance of communities, resulting in regime shifts, and how removal of stressors may allow for recovery. My postdoc addressed these factors by experimentally manipulating nutrients, sediments, and overfishing to determine how they act and interact to drive phase shifts. I found nonlinear interactions among these three stressors evolve over time to drive the tempo of shifts to macroalgal dominance. Further, I found removal of these stressors resulted in rapid herbivory, though the ecological memory of stressor history drove these recovery trajectories. Thus, my research on multiple stressors is expanding our understanding of nonlinear outcomes driven by complex interactions (Fong et al. 2018, Fong et al. 2020). Some of this research was published in Journal of Ecology, where I was featured as an Early Career Scientist.
Recently, I co-taught a graduate seminar on interactions with the aim of quantifying the relative frequency of additive, antagonistic, and synergistic interaction types. We discovered that changing which treatment is designated as the “control” changes antagonistic interactions to synergistic, and vice versa. This highly collaborative work with nine students is currently in preparation for submission to Science of the Total Environment and addresses issues with the framework used to classify stressor interactions.
Stressor regime- exploring the importance of timing, frequency, and magnitude of stressor events
Stressors can be characterized in terms of duration, frequency, and magnitude, and stressor regime can be characterized along a gradient ranging from pressed to pulsed. While stressors vary in regime, research characterizing stressor regime and quantifying the ecological impact of stressor regime remains limited, and my work is moving the needle on our understanding the ecological consequences of stressor regime. This work is particularly important in light of human actions, which alter stressor regimes. For example, alterations in rainfall patterns due to global climate change, agricultural and urban development, deforestation, septic tank leakage, and sewage outfalls alter nutrient and/or sediment stressor regimes.
My research characterizes stressor regimes, explores the ecological consequences of these regimes, and models future scenarios based on human activity. For example, I published two papers this year characterizing nutrient subsidies to estuarine and tropical nearshore communities (Fong et al. 2020a, b). Paired with experimental work, my research suggests some marine communities are characterized by pulse-interpulse nutrient regimes, and fluctuations between these regimes can drive the outcome of competition (Fong and Fong 2018). Predicted changes to rainfall patterns indicate the tropical reef system will move to a more pulsed regime while the temperate estuary will move to a more pressed regime, which will likely fundamentally change the structure of these communities.
Parasites as indicators of human impacts
Parasites have been generally ignored in ecological research. However, parasites are omnipresent –every living organism has at least one parasite. Parasites can be important community members and drive ecological patterns and processes. They serve as indicators of environmental and anthropogenic stress, because many species of parasites have complex lifecycles that depend on a diversity of intermediate hosts and a free-living stage that is often particularly sensitive to environmental conditions. Thus, parasites reflect changes in community structure and environmental condition.
My research has laid the foundational work for studying parasite ecology in the rocky intertidal. The isopod, Hemioniscus balani, is a parasite of barnacles in the rocky intertidal zone. This parasite infects upward of 10 barnacle species and is prevalent throughout Southern California where it infects upward of 25% of the barnacle population. Even though barnacles are a classic model organism in marine ecology, there are less than 15 papers published on its parasite, making it a ripe area for research. My work on the basic ecology of this parasite is the scaffold for using this parasite as an indicator of environmental stress. My previous research found no effect of local density or aggregation on parasitism (Fong 2016) and strong competition among parasites in dual infections (Fong et al. 2016). Fong et al. (2017) explored small-scale processes of spatial epidemiology and found anemones protect barnacle hosts from parasites by intercepting and consuming the parasites during their free-living, infectious stage. Finally, my research documented widespread parasitism across Southern California with strong impacts on host demography (Fong et al. 2018), and targeted parasitism of hosts with the highest likelihood of having ripe ovaries (Fong et al. 2019). This body of research is an important contribution because barnacles have a long history of use as a model organism in ecology, yet these parasites have never been incorporated into this research. Additionally, this work advances our ability to use this parasite as an indicator in the rocky intertidal zone.
What are the services and functions of emergent, shifted, or novel communities in the Anthropocene?
What forces regulating emergent communities and what services and functions do they provide?
Increases in natural and anthropogenic stressors have shifted many coral reefs to algal-dominance. Understanding the processes that regulate the community structure and stability of these shifted states is crucial as more rifts undergo regime change. In my research, I explore how top-down and bottom-up control, as well as positive feedbacks, regulate macroalgal community structure. In collaboration with undergraduate and graduate students, I have explored partitioning of herbivory by fishes, finding larger fish disproportionally contributed to top-down control on algal-dominated reefs (Fong et al. 2016). In a similar collaboration, my students and I found variation in herbivory strength across different types of algal communities compared to coral dominated zones, stabilizing coral communities (Fong et al. 2017, Bittick et al. 2020). A separate line of research has addressed the forces allowing for persistence of emergent stands of Turbinaria ornata on tropical reefs. We found this species is able to convert excess nutrients (bottom-up forcing) to bolstered physical and chemical defenses, reducing herbivory (top-down forcing) (Bergman et al. 2016, Bittick et al. 2016). Overall, understanding the processes that regulate shifted algal communities will be important as reefs shift, and may inform best management practices.
My research explores how algae function on reefs and is diverse in nature both because it is an open area of active and novel research and because it is highly collaborative- all of the papers described below have been published with at least one undergraduate as well as a graduate student collaborator. Through this research, I have built a network of colleagues with whom I continue to collaborate. For example, three undergraduate coauthors conceived, performed the experimental work, and coauthored Fong et al. (2018a), which found fish from multiple trophic levels target epibionts on macroalgae, which may be particularly important to juvenile fishes. Further, in collaboration with two graduate students and an undergraduate researcher, Bittick et al. (2018) found macroalgae can function as secondary foundational species on coral reefs by providing trophic support, recycling nutrients, and providing refuge and habitat for associated understory algae.
Can a trait-based framework be used to characterize and predict community structure and function?
My most recent research centers on building a trait-based framework for characterizing and predicting macroalgal community structure. Many ecologists use functional group models to classify diverse macroalgal species. These models are based on the underlying assumption that convergent evolution has resulted in morphologies with similar ecological functions. In one of my earliest research projects published in Ecology, Fong and Fong (2014) showed macroalgal functional forms groupings failed to predict species growth patterns in overfished and eutrophied coral reef ecosystems, conditions driven by human activity. Recently, we tested the finding in Fong and Fong (2014) by systematically quantifying the relationship between functional form, responsiveness to nutrient additions, and structural defense with a graduate student collaborator (Ryznar et al. 2020). This paper was just accepted at Journal of Ecology, and expanded to include macroalgal species in temperate systems as well to enhance our ability to generalize patterns across marine communities.
I am currently constructing a trait database for marine macroalgae with several colleagues in an effort to determine whether a trait-based approach is useful for understanding changes in macroalgal community structure. Because COVID has prevented fieldwork to collect traits, we are exploring the capacity of categorical traits such as calcification, gamete type, life cycle curated from keys and textbooks to characterize communities, changes in communities, and to isolate drivers.
An import aspect of my research program is that the majority of my work is done in the context of mentoring programs focused on the development of the next generation of diverse scientists. Of my 27 publications, my co-authors include 25 undergraduate students and six graduate students- a model I plan to continue. I am particularly proud of my ability to support a broad range of research interests through my mentorship of underrepresented minority in STEM. Overall, these projects relate to community ecology, and I am currently supporting four additional student-driven projects on the path to eventual publication.
How do anthropogenic stressors influence the resilience of ecological communities?
Multiple stressors, interactions, and nonlinear outcomes as drivers of “ecological surprises”
Multiple stressors acting simultaneously have become the new norm for ecological communities and will increase in the Anthropocene. Nonlinear interactions among these stressors are challenging to predict, and their commonality may explain the recent prevalence of “ecological surprises” and phase shifts across a diversity of ecological communities. I focus on interactions between local, manageable stressors with an emphasis on predicting ecological surprises.
Coral reefs have globally shifted to algal dominance, and I study these shifted, degraded states to expand our limited understanding of these emergent communities and the processes driving them. I am particularly focused on how stressor application erodes the resistance of communities, resulting in regime shifts, and how removal of stressors may allow for recovery. My postdoc addressed these factors by experimentally manipulating nutrients, sediments, and overfishing to determine how they act and interact to drive phase shifts. I found nonlinear interactions among these three stressors evolve over time to drive the tempo of shifts to macroalgal dominance. Further, I found removal of these stressors resulted in rapid herbivory, though the ecological memory of stressor history drove these recovery trajectories. Thus, my research on multiple stressors is expanding our understanding of nonlinear outcomes driven by complex interactions (Fong et al. 2018, Fong et al. 2020). Some of this research was published in Journal of Ecology, where I was featured as an Early Career Scientist.
Recently, I co-taught a graduate seminar on interactions with the aim of quantifying the relative frequency of additive, antagonistic, and synergistic interaction types. We discovered that changing which treatment is designated as the “control” changes antagonistic interactions to synergistic, and vice versa. This highly collaborative work with nine students is currently in preparation for submission to Science of the Total Environment and addresses issues with the framework used to classify stressor interactions.
Stressor regime- exploring the importance of timing, frequency, and magnitude of stressor events
Stressors can be characterized in terms of duration, frequency, and magnitude, and stressor regime can be characterized along a gradient ranging from pressed to pulsed. While stressors vary in regime, research characterizing stressor regime and quantifying the ecological impact of stressor regime remains limited, and my work is moving the needle on our understanding the ecological consequences of stressor regime. This work is particularly important in light of human actions, which alter stressor regimes. For example, alterations in rainfall patterns due to global climate change, agricultural and urban development, deforestation, septic tank leakage, and sewage outfalls alter nutrient and/or sediment stressor regimes.
My research characterizes stressor regimes, explores the ecological consequences of these regimes, and models future scenarios based on human activity. For example, I published two papers this year characterizing nutrient subsidies to estuarine and tropical nearshore communities (Fong et al. 2020a, b). Paired with experimental work, my research suggests some marine communities are characterized by pulse-interpulse nutrient regimes, and fluctuations between these regimes can drive the outcome of competition (Fong and Fong 2018). Predicted changes to rainfall patterns indicate the tropical reef system will move to a more pulsed regime while the temperate estuary will move to a more pressed regime, which will likely fundamentally change the structure of these communities.
Parasites as indicators of human impacts
Parasites have been generally ignored in ecological research. However, parasites are omnipresent –every living organism has at least one parasite. Parasites can be important community members and drive ecological patterns and processes. They serve as indicators of environmental and anthropogenic stress, because many species of parasites have complex lifecycles that depend on a diversity of intermediate hosts and a free-living stage that is often particularly sensitive to environmental conditions. Thus, parasites reflect changes in community structure and environmental condition.
My research has laid the foundational work for studying parasite ecology in the rocky intertidal. The isopod, Hemioniscus balani, is a parasite of barnacles in the rocky intertidal zone. This parasite infects upward of 10 barnacle species and is prevalent throughout Southern California where it infects upward of 25% of the barnacle population. Even though barnacles are a classic model organism in marine ecology, there are less than 15 papers published on its parasite, making it a ripe area for research. My work on the basic ecology of this parasite is the scaffold for using this parasite as an indicator of environmental stress. My previous research found no effect of local density or aggregation on parasitism (Fong 2016) and strong competition among parasites in dual infections (Fong et al. 2016). Fong et al. (2017) explored small-scale processes of spatial epidemiology and found anemones protect barnacle hosts from parasites by intercepting and consuming the parasites during their free-living, infectious stage. Finally, my research documented widespread parasitism across Southern California with strong impacts on host demography (Fong et al. 2018), and targeted parasitism of hosts with the highest likelihood of having ripe ovaries (Fong et al. 2019). This body of research is an important contribution because barnacles have a long history of use as a model organism in ecology, yet these parasites have never been incorporated into this research. Additionally, this work advances our ability to use this parasite as an indicator in the rocky intertidal zone.
What are the services and functions of emergent, shifted, or novel communities in the Anthropocene?
What forces regulating emergent communities and what services and functions do they provide?
Increases in natural and anthropogenic stressors have shifted many coral reefs to algal-dominance. Understanding the processes that regulate the community structure and stability of these shifted states is crucial as more rifts undergo regime change. In my research, I explore how top-down and bottom-up control, as well as positive feedbacks, regulate macroalgal community structure. In collaboration with undergraduate and graduate students, I have explored partitioning of herbivory by fishes, finding larger fish disproportionally contributed to top-down control on algal-dominated reefs (Fong et al. 2016). In a similar collaboration, my students and I found variation in herbivory strength across different types of algal communities compared to coral dominated zones, stabilizing coral communities (Fong et al. 2017, Bittick et al. 2020). A separate line of research has addressed the forces allowing for persistence of emergent stands of Turbinaria ornata on tropical reefs. We found this species is able to convert excess nutrients (bottom-up forcing) to bolstered physical and chemical defenses, reducing herbivory (top-down forcing) (Bergman et al. 2016, Bittick et al. 2016). Overall, understanding the processes that regulate shifted algal communities will be important as reefs shift, and may inform best management practices.
My research explores how algae function on reefs and is diverse in nature both because it is an open area of active and novel research and because it is highly collaborative- all of the papers described below have been published with at least one undergraduate as well as a graduate student collaborator. Through this research, I have built a network of colleagues with whom I continue to collaborate. For example, three undergraduate coauthors conceived, performed the experimental work, and coauthored Fong et al. (2018a), which found fish from multiple trophic levels target epibionts on macroalgae, which may be particularly important to juvenile fishes. Further, in collaboration with two graduate students and an undergraduate researcher, Bittick et al. (2018) found macroalgae can function as secondary foundational species on coral reefs by providing trophic support, recycling nutrients, and providing refuge and habitat for associated understory algae.
Can a trait-based framework be used to characterize and predict community structure and function?
My most recent research centers on building a trait-based framework for characterizing and predicting macroalgal community structure. Many ecologists use functional group models to classify diverse macroalgal species. These models are based on the underlying assumption that convergent evolution has resulted in morphologies with similar ecological functions. In one of my earliest research projects published in Ecology, Fong and Fong (2014) showed macroalgal functional forms groupings failed to predict species growth patterns in overfished and eutrophied coral reef ecosystems, conditions driven by human activity. Recently, we tested the finding in Fong and Fong (2014) by systematically quantifying the relationship between functional form, responsiveness to nutrient additions, and structural defense with a graduate student collaborator (Ryznar et al. 2020). This paper was just accepted at Journal of Ecology, and expanded to include macroalgal species in temperate systems as well to enhance our ability to generalize patterns across marine communities.
I am currently constructing a trait database for marine macroalgae with several colleagues in an effort to determine whether a trait-based approach is useful for understanding changes in macroalgal community structure. Because COVID has prevented fieldwork to collect traits, we are exploring the capacity of categorical traits such as calcification, gamete type, life cycle curated from keys and textbooks to characterize communities, changes in communities, and to isolate drivers.