This project is awarded under the Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowships and Supporting Activities Program for 2006. By combining observational studies with more detailed empirical work, this project will reveal the factors responsible for the distribution and abundance of vascular plants in South American salt marshes. This work will also lead to a mechanistic understanding of the linkage between nutrient supply and consumer control in these systems. Complimenting ongoing work in North American semitropical and arctic marshes, it will challenge the paradigm that salt marsh systems are largely under bottom up control and elucidate, on a continental spatial scale, how eutrophication and different guilds of herbivores are interacting to fundamentally change what controls community structure in these threatened ecosystems.
This work will allow me to broaden my ecological knowledge, design a research program that will have important implications for conservation and management of these ecosystems and will also lead to greater international collaboration. The work will be done at Brown University under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Bertness. This research will also serve to help me achieve my goal of pursuing a career in academia, and thereby allow me to serve as a positive role model and help to encourage scientific education of underrepresented groups.
