ZEN Benthic Ecology Meeting 2013

March 26th, 2013Blog0 comments

Pamela Reynolds, ZEN Coordinator

by Pamela Reynolds (ZEN coordinator)

Meetings are wonderful excuses to meet up with old friends, make new ones, and, of course, talk science! Last week I presented some of the emerging results at the annual Benthic Ecology Meeting in Savannah, Georgia. The meeting was a great opportunity for many of the ZEN partners to network with each other and other attendees of the meeting, which focuses on marine ecology research along the East and Gulf coasts. Drs. Mathieu Cusson (Quebec), James Douglass (Massachusetts/Florida), Kevin Hovel (California), and Erik Sotka (North Carolina) were all in attendance, along with two new ZEN partners, Drs. Randall Hughes (Massachusetts) and Joel Fodrie (North Carolina), two of the ZEN student exchange fellows (Rachel Gittman, Nicole Kollars) and other grad students who have helped with the ZEN research (Jon Lefcheck, Laetitia Joseph). I was excited about the depth and breadth of talks, especially by those presented by the ZEN partners, which ranged from experiments on the role of functional diversity and salt marsh mutualisms, to whether crabs can hear and the effects of seagrass habitat fragmentation on epifauna. (See a full list of talks and abstracts on the BEM website) Additionally, our short music video “GRAZER” was one of 14 films chosen for the main Beneath the Waves Film Festival screening at the conference. I’ll post the film here shortly so check back.

Some of the ZEN partners at the 2013 Benthic Ecology Meeting