We are proud to share the new publication from the Witman Lab, titled "Experimental demonstration of a trophic cascade in the Galápagos rocky subtidal: Effects of consumer identity and behavior". In it, Professor Witman and colleagues Franz Smith and Mark Novak show observational and experimental evidence as well as behavioral interaction modeling of a 4-tier trophic cascade involving top predators (sea lions and sharks), meso-predators (triggerfish), herbivores (urchins), and primary producers (algae). This pathway is further complicated by interference competition by hogfish, which harass and steal the urchin prey from triggerfish. You can read the Brown University press release here, and the article is open access and free to read at:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0175705
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0175705
