Equivocal associations between small-scale shoreline restoration and subtidal fishes in an urban estuary.

Restoration of degraded coastal and estuarine habitats owing to human activities is a major global concern. In Puget Sound, Washington, U.S.

From the predictable to the unexpected: kelp forest and benthic invertebrate community dynamics following decades of sea otter expansion.

The recovery of predators has the potential to restore ecosystems and fundamentally alter the services they provide. One iconic example of this is keystone predation by sea otters in the Northeast Pacific. Here, we combine spatial time series of sea otter abundance, canopy kelp area, and benthic invertebrate abundance from Washington State, USA, to examine the shifting consequences of sea otter reintroduction for kelp and kelp forest communities.

Stable Isotope Applications for Understanding Shark Ecology in the Northeast Pacific Ocean.

Stable isotopes are used to address a wide range of ecological questions and can help researchers and managers better understand the movement and trophic ecology of sharks. Here, we review how shark studies from the Northeast Pacific Ocean (NEP) have employed stable isotopes to estimate trophic level and diet composition and infer movement and habitat-use patterns. To date, the number of NEP shark studies that have used stable isotopes is limited, suggesting that the approach is underutilized.

Population assessment using multivariate time-series analysis: A case study of rockfishes in Puget Sound.

Estimating a population's growth rate and year-to-year variance is a key component of population viability analysis (PVA). However, standard PVA methods require time series of counts obtained using consistent survey methods over many years. In addition, it can be difficult to separate observation and process variance, which is critical for PVA.

Spatial distribution of environmental DNA in a nearshore marine habitat.

In the face of increasing threats to biodiversity, the advancement of methods for surveying biological communities is a major priority for ecologists. Recent advances in molecular biological technologies have made it possible to detect and sequence DNA from environmental samples (environmental DNA or eDNA); however, eDNA techniques have not yet seen widespread adoption as a routine method for biological surveillance primarily due to gaps in our understanding of the dynamics of eDNA in space and time. In order to identify the effective spatial scale of this approach in a dynamic marine environment, we collected marine surface water samples from transects ranging from the intertidal zone to four kilometers from shore.