James G. Douglass, Marine Ecologist

Research Interests

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I am an ecologist interested in describing and protecting the biological diversity and beneficial ecosystem functions of coastal marine habitats. Coastal oceans are simultaneously threatened by decreasing water quality, changing physical conditions, and overharvest of ecologically important species, so my research attempts to address the interactive effects of these threats. I earned my doctorate in 2008 at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, where I studied the role of small, invertebrate grazers in mediating water quality and food-web changes in Chesapeake Bay eelgrass beds. From 2008 to August 2010 I worked as a postdoctoral fellow with the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce, Florida, comparing the food-web structure and grazing impacts on seagrass in no-take marine reserves versus areas subject to fishing. I have now begun another research job at Northeastern University's Marine Science Center in Nahant, Massachusetts, where I am managing an algal diversity manipulation at rocky intertidal sites along a latitudinal gradient from Nahant to Northern Maine. I also look to continue my work with seagrass epifaunal communities, integrating my findings from Florida, Virginia, and New England. In both my graduate studies and my post-graduate research I have integrated manipulative experiments with observations of spatial and temporal variation in natural communities, and I strongly believe in the complementarity of experimental and descriptive approaches to ecological research.

Education

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8/02 – 8/08 Ph.D. Marine Science. College of William and Mary, School of Marine Science and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VA

8/98 – 5/02 B.S. Biology. Rice University, Houston, TX

8/01 – 12/01 Duke Organization for Tropical Studies, Costa Rica

5/99 – 6/99 Duke Marine Laboratory, Beaufort, NC

9/94 – 6/98 Capital High School, Olympia, WA

Publications

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JG Douglass, EA Canuel, JE Duffy (2011) Food web structure in a Chesapeake Bay eelgrass bed as determined through gut contents and 13C and 15N isotope analysis. Estuaries and Coasts 34: 701-711. (link)

JG Douglass, KE France, JP Richardson, JE Duffy (2010) Seasonal and interannual change in a Chesapeake Bay eelgrass community: insights into biotic and abiotic control of community structure. Limnology and Oceanography 55: 1499-1520. (link)

AC Spivak, EA Canuel, JE Duffy, JG Douglass, JP Richardson (2009) Epifaunal community composition and nutrient addition alter sediment organic matter composition in a natural eelgrass Zostera marina bed: a field experiment. Marine Ecology Progress Series 376: 55-67. (link)

JG Douglass, JE Duffy, JF Bruno (2008) Herbivore and predator diversity interactively affect ecosystem properties in a marine community. Ecology Letters 11: 598-608. (link) See also this technical comment and my response.

JG Douglass, JE Duffy, AC Spivak, JP Richardson (2007) Nutrient versus consumer control of community structure in a Chesapeake Bay eelgrass habitat. Marine Ecology Progress Series 348: 71-83. (link)