Carrie Kappel

Postdoctoral Fellow
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
University of California Santa Barbara
735 State Street, Suite 300
Santa Barbara, CA 93950

Tel: (805) 966-1677
Fax: (805) 892-2510
Email:

Education
Ph.D., Biological Sciences, Stanford University, 2006
B.Sc., Biology, Brown University, 1995

Research Interests
Carrie Kappel is a marine community ecologist who has just completed her Ph.D. in biological sciences with Dr. Fiorenza Micheli at Stanford University. She is interested in the application of community ecology to marine biodiversity conservation and conducted research with the Bahamas Biocomplexity Project as part of her dissertation. Carrie conducted her fieldwork, which involved quantitative video surveys of benthic habitats, as part of the Habitat Working Group, at all of the group's sites. She used the benthic and fish databases collected via this group effort as her main data sources. Her research with the BBP centered on spatial variation in abundance and diversity of coral and fish species across a range of scales and different habitat types. By focusing on less common members of the coral reef community, Carrie provided insight into the use of habitats as a proxy for underlying biodiversity in conservation planning. Her results show that remotely sensed benthic habitat classes are a good surrogate for communities of both common and low abundance fishes and corals at scales up to ~100 km, a scale which corresponds to individual islands and island systems within The Bahamas. This suggests that the island scale is an appropriate one for conservation planning and that habitat maps can form an effective basis for marine reserve design for biodiversity conservation. In addition, Carrie’s analysis of the factors that affect coral community structure demonstrated that depth, substrate rugosity, and grazing intensity by herbivorous parrotfishes contribute significantly to spatial variation in these communities. By measuring and incorporating such factors into habitat-based conservation planning activities, we may improve our ability to understand and predict the distribution of biodiversity across the archipelago.

Selected Publications
Harborne A.R., P.J. Mumby, C.V. Kappel, C.P. Dahlgren, F. Micheli, K.E. Holmes, and D.R. Brumbaugh. In Press. Tropical coastal habitats as surrogates of fish community structure, grazing, and fisheries value. Ecological Applications.

Harborne, A.R., P.J. Mumby, C.V. Kappel, C.P. Dahlgren, F. Micheli, K.E. Holmes, J.N. Sanchirico, K. Broad, I.A. Elliott, and D.R. Brumbaugh. 2008. Reserve effects and natural variation in coral reef communities. Journal of Applied Ecology 45: 1010-1018.

Mumby, P.J., A.R. Harborne, J. Williams, C.V. Kappel, D.R. Brumbaugh, F. Micheli, K.E. Holmes, C.P. Dahlgren, C.B. Paris, and P.G. Blackwell. 2007. Trophic cascade facilitates coral recruitment in a marine reserve. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(20): 8362-8367. [PDF]

Armsworth, P.R., C.V. Kappel, F. Micheli, and E.P. Bjorkstedt. 2006. Working seascapes: biodiversity conservation and the protection of endangered species in marine ecosystems. In: J.M. Scott, D.D. Goble, and F.W. Davis (eds.), The Endangered Species Act at thirty: Conserving biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. Volume 2. Island Press, Washington D.C.

Armsworth, P.R., C.V. Kappel, F. Micheli, and E.P. Bjorkstedt. 2006. Marine species. In: D.D. Goble, J.M. Scott, and F. W. Davis (eds.), The Endangered Species Act at thirty: Renewing the conservation promise. Volume 1. Island Press, Washington D.C.

Micheli, F., A. O. Shelton, K. W. Heiman, and C. V. Kappel. In prep. Persistence and recovery of depleted marine invertebrates in marine reserves of central California.

Mumby, P.J., C.P. Dahlgren, A.R. Harborne, C.V. Kappel, F. Micheli, D.R. Brumbaugh, K.E. Holmes, J.M. Mendes, K. Broad, J.N. Sanchirico, K. Buch, S. Box, R.W. Stoffle, and A.B. Gill. 2006. Fishing, trophic cascades, and the process of grazing on coral reefs. Science 311: 98-101.

Mumby, P.J., F. Micheli, C.P. Dahlgren, S.Y. Litvin, A.B. Gill, D.R. Brumbaugh, K. Broad, J.N. Sanchirico, C.V. Kappel, A.R. Harborne, and K.E. Holmes. 2006. Marine parks need sharks? Response to letter. Science 312: 527-528.

Kappel, C.V. 2006. Threats to marine biodiversity and considerations for its conservation: from species to seascapes. Ph.D. dissertation. Stanford University. 183 pp. [PDF]

Kappel, C.V. 2005. Losing pieces of the puzzle: threats to marine, estuarine and diadromous species. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3(5): 275-282.

Pandolfi, J. M., N. Baron, R. H. Bradbury, H. M. Guzmán, T. P. Hughes, C. V. Kappel, F. Micheli, J. C. Ogden, H. P. Possingham, E. Sala, and J. B. C. Jackson. 2005. Are US coral reefs on the slippery slope to slime? Science 307: 1725-1726.

Jackson, J.B.C., J.C. Ogden, J.M. Pandolfi, N. Baron, R.H. Bradbury, H.M. Guzman, T.P. Hughes, C.V. Kappel, F. Micheli, H. P. Possingham, and E. Sala. 2005. Reassessing US coral reefs - Response. Science 308: 1741-1742.

C.V. Kappel, F. Micheli, D. Brumbaugh, C.P. Dahlgren, A.R. Harborne, K.E. Holmes, and P.J. Mumby. 2005. Spatial scaling of diversity and rarity in coral and fish communities. Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting Abstracts 90.

Kappel, C.V., F. Micheli, K.W. Heiman, G.C. Osio, R. Sagarin, S. Sethi, and A.O. Shelton. 2003. Shifts in species dominance on rocky shores under human and natural disturbance regimes. Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting Abstracts 88: 175.