Christopher Harley

I'm interested in why plants and animals live where they live, and how their distributions will shift as a result of global climate change. Specifically, I study how abiotic forces, such as temperature and ocean acidification, and biological relationships, such as predation, competition, and facilitation, structure coastal marine communities. Research area Ecology, Evolution Research Synopsis I study climate change impacts on rocky coasts. I’m interested in how climatic factors, such as temperature, salinity, carbon dioxide concentration, and pH, along with biological relationships, such as predation and facilitation, interact to create ecological patterns in time and space. Ongoing Research Projects Understanding how ecosystems are changing in response to environmental forcing is one of the central scientific challenges of our time. In my research group, we work on several areas that we see as especially high priority: 1) changing environmental variability, 2) multiple stressors / drivers, 3) life-cycle effects and ontogenetic bottlenecks, 4) genetic diversity and local adaptation, and 5) interspecific interactions including keystone predation, biogenic habitat provisioning, and host-parasite dynamics.