Program
Systemic Management Studies

Location
Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Washington.

Project Description

Can ecological patterns determine the sustainability of an ecosystem? This project involves bringing ecology (especially macroecology) into policy and management based on patterns of empirically observed sustainability. One macroecological pattern of note is the energy equivalence rule (energy consumed per unit area is independent of body size across a wide range of species); a related pattern involves population density as it decreases with body size. The intern will be responsible for assembling a set of data from various ecosystems around the world. These data will involve estimates of biomass (or portion of available resources) consumed by mammalian predators – especially those of human body size.

The focus of this work will be primarily on two issues: consumption rates from individual resource species and consumption rates from groups of resource species. The work will involve finding and reading papers from various sources, including libraries, the web, and unpublished reports.

The final products will include a list of resource species, or species groups, with a corresponding list of consumer species, and the rates that they consume those resources. A summary will be published on the AFSC web site and the data will ultimately be published in a peer reviewed publication.

Field Work Description
none.

Qualifications Required
The intern should be familiar with and have experience in the use of data-base software (spreadsheets), the use of libraries and on-line access to journals and papers published in pdf format, and have basic training in the fields of biology and ecology.