Young scientists rock

The Cape Perpetua Young Scientist and Wave Makers Webinars are a variety of online educational presentations hosted by the Cape Perpetua Collaborative that will be held monthly through April.

On Tuesday, Jan. 10, Zechariah Meunier will discuss changing ocean conditions with local impacts.

Long-term, large-scale studies of succession provide important understanding of how species assemble into communities and respond to changing environmental conditions. When environmental stressors are severe, they can trigger abrupt transitions from one type of community to another in a process called a regime shift. From 2014 to 2016, rocky intertidal ecosystems in the Northeast Pacific Ocean experienced extreme temperatures during a multiyear marine heatwave and sharp population declines of the keystone predator due to sea star wasting disease. In a 15-year succession experiment conducted in Oregon and northern California, Meunier and collaborators measured rocky intertidal communities before, during and after the onset of the heatwave and wasting disease outbreak.

Meunier is a PhD candidate in the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. With fellowship support from OSU and the National Science Foundation, he studies rocky intertidal ecosystems of Oregon, California and Nova Scotia. Prior to his doctoral studies, Meunier completed a BA in biology and environmental studies at Lawrence University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude in 2015.

The Jan. 10 talk begins at 6 pm. For more information, go to capeperpetuacollaborative.org.