Evie Wieters
Lines of Investigation
Research in my lab is directed toward understanding how ecological interactions shape the response of marine shallow subtidal and rocky intertidal communities to perturbations and how pressures from changing environment and resource use alters ecological pathways and habitat fragmentation that can result in ecosystem fragility or susceptibility to long-lasting shifts in community structure and functioning. Our research principally focuses on four main topics:
- Physical forcing of benthic ecosystems – particularly how changing environmental processes that operate at comparatively large scales modify the balance of positive and negative interactions among species that form local communities. Predominant themes include bottom-up regulation by oceanographic processes (particularly upwelling), the importance of non-trophic interactions and facilitative effects (e.g. habitat modification), and the role of dispersal.
- Significance of biological diversity for ecosystem functioning, particularly as buffer to variable environmental conditions.
- Ecological resistance and resilience to extreme climate events. We combine an individual-based understanding of changing vulnerability to climate fluctuations with evaluation of alteration of other “supporting” species interactions, with particular focus on highly connected species (e.g. habitat providers).
- Biological habitat patchiness and fragmentation and its relation to transitions in ecological dynamics. In all our ecological studies, we use a combination of empirical approaches, including correlation between physical and biological variables, comparative methods, and manipulative experiments in the field and laboratory. Thanks to recent national/international collaborations, we are also utilizing Ecological Networks to describe and compare structures of trophic and non-trophic interactions in real, complex systems and understand effects of network structure on properties such as ecosystem stability.
Lab Members
Courses in which participates
- Coordinator of Research Internships and International Students
Selected Publications
The hidden diversity of temperate mesophotic reefs from central Chile (south-eastern Pacific Ocean) assessed through towed underwater videos.
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Navarro Campoy, Alejandro Pérez-Matus, Evie Wieters, Rodrigo Alarcón-Ireland, Vladimir Garmendia, Ricardo Beldade, Sergio A. Navarrete, Miriam Fernández. 2023.
- Diversity, 15, 360
Spatio-temporal patterns of the crustacean demersal fishery discard from the south Humboldt Current System, based on scientific observer program (2014–2019).
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Landaeta MF, Hernández-Santoro C, Search FV, Castillo MI, C Bernal, SA Navarrete, EA Wieters, R Beldade, AN Campoi, A Pérez-Matus. 2023.
- PLoS One, Febrero
Geographical variation of multiplex ecological networks in marine intertidal communities
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M Lurgi, N Galiana, BR Broitman, S Kéfi, EA Wieters, SA Navarrete. 2021.
- Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 102(1):1-7