Untangling Salt Marsh Food Webs

In this talk, ecologist Brian Silliman discusses the discovery that salt marshes are controlled by the top-down forces of consumers.

Coastal wetlands are dominated by a variety of plants adapted to a stressful environment. The growth of these plants was once thought to be limited only by nutrient availability. Through his experiments, Silliman revealed that the growth and abundance of salt marsh plants is actually mainly controlled by herbivores, as in many other terrestrial ecosystems.

This talk is from a 2016 Holiday Lecture Series, Ecology of Rivers and Coasts: Food Webs and Human Impacts.