Press Releases

March 31, 2004

Assessing the Success of Marine Reserves: McGrath Lecture at Southampton College
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary's John Valentine Shares Views in Free Public Talk

Contact:
Patricia Conway
631-287-8313

Southampton, NY - With interests in experimental marine ecology, plant-animal interactions and human-dominated ecosystems, marine scientist John Valentine will have much material to cover in his talk "Marine Food Web Interactions in the 21st Century: Experimental Evidence That Intense Harvests of Large Predators Has Altered Trophic Exchanges at the Coral Reef-Seagrass Interface," at Southampton College on Wednesday, April 14 at 7 p.m. in the Business Center Lecture Hall.

Widely published in his field, Valentine, who is an associate professor at the University of South Alabama, conducts his research in diverse locations ranging from the lower reaches of the Mobile Bay Delta to the marine protected areas of the northern Florida Keys.

Valentine, currently working on a project on experimental assessments of grazing intensity in seagrass habitats, is planning to investigate the degree to which fragments of seagrass can subsidize the productivity of macroinvertebrates in nearby unvegetated habitats.

The significance of Valentine's research lies in its attempt to understand the processes that control the distribution and productivity of submerged vegetated habitats throughout the western Atlantic Ocean. "Because of the widespread occurrence of these habitats, the extraordinary productivity and richness of their associated flora and fauna, an understanding of the factors controlling their distribution and the degree to which they subsidize the productivity of nearby less productive habitats is essential to our understanding of how the overall productivity of nearshore waters is determined," he said.

The lecture is sponsored by the John P. McGrath Fund of Long Island University and co-sponsored by The Southampton College Honors Program and the Natural Science Division. For further information on other lectures in the series call (631)287-8401.