Brian Silliman

www.sillimanlab.com

410 Carr
Voice: (352) 392-1137 
silliman@zoology.ufl.edu

Research Interest

The majority of my work has been with plant and animal communities on the temperate shorelines of the Western Atlantic, particularly those in salt marsh and rocky intertidal habitats. I am an experimental ecologist and employ manipulative field studies in coastline systems to examine and unravel how patterns in natural communities are generated and maintained. I incorporate population (density dependence), community (multi-trophic aspects of food webs), and ecosystem (biogeochemical cycles) level processes in my investigations and typically design experiments with specific conservation or management problems in mind. My primary research focuses on how consumers (top-down forces) and nutrients (bottom-up forces) interact to control structure and productivity of marine plant communities. This research is particularly applicable to marine conservation efforts because continued coastal development and increased demand for seafood have resulted in heavy nutrient loading and severely depleted fisheries in near-shore marine communities.

Students Currently Supervised

I would like to take one graduate student in my first year and, potentially, a post-doc. Please visit www.sillimanlab.com and If interested, please contact me via email.

Representative Publications

Silliman, B. R., J. van de Koppel, M. D. Bertness, L. Stanton, and I. Mendelsohn. 2005 Drought, snails, and large-scale die-off of southern U.S. salt marshes. Science 310:1803-1806.

Silliman, B. R. and M. D. Bertness. 2004. Shoreline development drives invasion of Phragmites australis and the loss of New England salt marsh plant diversity. Conservation Biology 18:1424-1434.

Silliman, B. R., C. A. Layman, K. Geyer and J. C. Zieman. 2004. Predation by the black-clawed mud crab, Panopeus herbstii, in mid-Atlantic salt marshes: Further evidence for top-down control of community structure. Estuaries 27: 188-196.

Bertness, M. D., B. R. Silliman and R. Jefferies. 2004. North American salt marshes under siege. American Scientist 92: 54-61.

Trussell, G., P. J. Ewanchuk, M. D. Bertness and B. R. Silliman. 2004. Predator-induced changes in prey behavior drive a trophic cascade in rocky shore tide pools. Oecologia 139:427-432.

Layman, C. A., A. Arrington, R., B. R. Silliman and B. Langerhans. 2004. Degree of fragmentation affects fish assemblage structure in Andros Island (Bahamas) estuaries. Caribbean Journal of Science 40:232-244

Silliman, B. R. and S. Y. Newell. Fungal-farming in a snail. 2003. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 100:15643-15648.

Silliman, B. R. and M. D. Bertness. 2002. A Trophic Cascade Regulates Salt Marsh Primary Production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 99: 10500-10505.

Silliman, B.R., M. Bertness, and D. Strong. eds. in preparation. Anthropogenic Modification of North American Salt Marshes. University of California Press.