My new paper is out!
Craig R. McClain, James C. Stegen, and Allen H. Hurlbert Dispersal, environmental niches and oceanic-scale turnover in deep-sea bivalves Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences published online before print December 21, 2011, doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.2166
I discuss it over at my other website, Deep-Sea News.
In the food poor, homogenous mud flats of the deep sea, how can so many species coexist? The answer is snow…The deep-sea floor is essentially a patchwork quilt of different small habitats. I began this yearby publishing a study addressing how heterogeneity in marine snow of distances of just a few yards can lead to completely different communities of organisms. At the end of this year, just today in fact, I with coauthors show this same pattern over several thousands of kilometers.
This paper also got coverage at io9, Wired, and Discovery.
- Gonzalez, R.T. (2012) The ocean floor is like a rainforest where feces and dead animals rain from the sky. io9 Jan-10
- Keim, B. (2012) The bounty of species in a single scoop of mud. Wired Science Jan-6
- Reed, C. (2012) A penny for your bivalves. Discovery News Jan-27
