Honors

Explore evolutionary forces underlying community assembly by tracking the strength of community-environment relationships at fine to broad taxonomic resolutions Hsiao-Pei Lu and Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University Species is considered as the fundamental unit for ecological studies. Nevertheless, it is notable that living organisms are hierarchically organized: individuals can be classified into species, species into genera, genera into families, and so on. Previous studies on environmental assessments have found that the detected strength of community-environment relationships varies depending on the resolution of taxonomic classification, with the best…

Reference: http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchem.2608.html

“How much does groundwater contribute to sea level rise?“ Min-Hui Lo Rising sea level is a threat to people who live near the coastal regions and in small islands; hence, accurately projecting rates of sea level rise is important, especially under climate changes. Recent assessments indicate that groundwater depletion (GWD) may become the most important positive terrestrial contribution. Future projections of increasing reliance on groundwater suggests that GWD will become the most important singular terrestrial contribution to sea level rise over the next 50 years, likely equal in magnitude to…

Fishing causes age/size truncation and drives marine fishes to aggregate in space, elevating ecosystem risk A population usually does not uniformly distribute in space. Previous studies have found that when a population is getting larger, the variance of the population abundance over a space (i.e., aggregation degree) will also be increasing. This mean-variance relationship is the well-known Taylor’s power law (V=aMb). The exponent b in Taylor’s power law is an indicator of the “aggregation potential” of a species. That is, for a population has a higher b, it will be…

Ramifications of short-term meteorological variability on elevational range size   Spatial distributions of fauna are sensitive to climate variabilities. Classic ecological hypotheses have all suggested that greater seasonal climatic fluctuations will result in a wider species geographic distribution. These were proposed about a half century ago and have been heavily tested through the years. However, animals experience not only seasonal climatic but diurnal meteorological dynamics, and the latter one has rarely been addressed and investigated. A collaborative study led by Wei-Ping Chan and Sheng-Feng Shen of Academia Sinica, I-Ching Chen…

Synergistic effects of predator and prey size diversity on trophic transfer efficiency in ocean ecosystems Carmen García-Comas and Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University A group of scientists from the Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, led by Dr. Carmen García-Comas and Prof. Chih-hao Hsieh, demonstrate that the interaction of predator and prey size diversities affects trophic transfer efficiency in marine plankton. This is the first study to analyze individual size structure at two trophic levels in plankton, and proposes mechanisms to explain variation of trophic transfer efficiency…