Background and research

Background and research:

I joined the SDSU faculty in 2001. Before arriving at SDSU, in 1999 I received my Ph.D. from the School of Marine Sciences at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, part of the College of William and Mary in Virginia. I then was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Associate, working at the Beaufort, NC NOAA lab with Dr. Mark Fonseca. In 2000 I moved to California and spent one year as a visiting assistant professor at Sonoma State University in Sonoma County, CA before coming to SDSU.

My research focuses on the ecology and conservation of marine invertebrates. Some of the projects underway in the lab include:

• the effects of seagrass habitat structure on invertebrate population dynamics, community structure, and predator-prey relationships, with particular reference to structure at landscape scales (presently funded by the San Diego Foundation, in collaboration with Dr. Helen Regan of SDSU).
• spiny lobster behavior, survival, and population dynamics in southern California (presently funded by California Sea Grant).
• effects of habitat structure on American lobster population dynamics, behavior, survival, and distribution in New England (a collaboration with Dr. Rick Wahle of the Bigelow Labs for Ocean Sciences, and funded by the National Science Foundation and NOAA's National Undersea Research Program).
• population dynamics of the Asian mussel Musculista senhousia in southern California.

Classes taught:

My primary teaching responsibility at SDSU is Marine Ecology (Bio 517), an upper division lab class for biology majors. The class focuses on the interactions that occur among marine organisms and their surrounding biotic and abiotic features. The course begins with an introduction to the oceans and the types of organisms that live there, and then addresses evolutionary characteristics that have developed among oceanic organisms, with a close look at open populations, in which organisms have separate larval, juvenile and adult stages. The middle of the course focuses on the basic ecological processes, such as predation and competition, that structure communities within various habitats. Finally, an important component of the course is the concluding section on the special problems that confront marine organisms through the actions of people.

Other undergraduate courses I have taught include:

• Ecology and the environment (Bio 354), an upper division introductory course in ecology. This course usually is team taught, and I handle the first half of the semester on populations, life tables, community-level interactions, and conservation ecology.
• Life in the sea (Bio 324), an upper division course in marine biology for non-biology majors. This typically is a large course (e.g. 100+ students) that introduces non-biology students to marine organisms and their environments.
• Biostatistics (Bio 215), a lower division introductory course in statistics for biology and pre-med majors. I teach the first half of the semester that covers the basics of probability, sampling and experimental design, descriptive statistics, and t-tests.

I also teach graduate seminar courses, including Marine Conservation Biology (Bio 600), a course in which students review and discuss topical literature on problems confronting marine organisms and their habitats. Students perform presentations on specific conservation topics and team up to assume roles (fisher, manager, scientist, conservationist) and complete a management plan for a troubled fishery. The course ends with a mock meeting of the fisheries management council in which participants must decide what actions can be taken to increase yield, preserve species and habitats, and gather accurate information on relevant species.

Recent publications (* indicates student author):

*Mai, T.T. and K.A. Hovel. Influence of local-scale and landscape-scale habitat characteristics on California spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus) abundance and survival. Submitted to Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research.

Hovel, K.A. and H. M. Regan. In press. Using an individual-based model to examine the roles of habitat fragmentation and behavior on predator-prey relationships in seagrass landscapes. Landscape Ecology.

*Sirota, L. and K.A. Hovel. In press. Eelgrass (Zostera marina) structural complexity: relative effects of shoot length, shoot density, and surface area on epifaunal community composition in San Diego Bay, California, USA. Marine Ecology Progress Series.

*Reed, B.J. and K.A. Hovel. In press. Seagrass habitat disturbance: how loss and fragmentation of eelgrass (Zostera marina) influences epifaunal abundance and diversity in San Diego Bay, California, USA. Marine Ecology Progress Series.

**Kushner, R.B. and K.A. Hovel. 2006. Effects of native predators and eelgrass habitat structure on the introduced Asian mussel Musculista senhousia in Southern California. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 332: 166-177.

Hovel, K.A. and M.S. Fonseca. 2005. Influence of seagrass landscape structure on the juvenile blue crab habitat-survival function. Marine Ecology Progress Series 300: 179-191.

*Healey, D. and K.A. Hovel. 2004. Seagrass patchiness influences epifaunal abundance and diversity in San Diego Bay, USA. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 313: 155-174.

Hovel, K.A. 2003. Habitat fragmentation in marine landscapes: relative effects of seagrass cover and configuration on juvenile crab survival in California and North Carolina seagrass beds. Biological Conservation 110: 401-412

Hovel, K.A., M.S. Fonseca, D.L. Meyer, W.J. Kenworthy, and P.G. Whitfield. 2002. Effects of seagrass landscape structure, structural complexity and hydrodynamic regime on macrofaunal densities in North Carolina seagrass beds. Marine Ecology Progress Series 243: 11-24.

Hovel, K.A. and R.N. Lipcius. 2002. Effects of seagrass habitat fragmentation on juvenile blue crab survival and abundance. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 271: 75-98.

Hovel, K.A., A. Bartholomew and R.N. Lipcius. 2002. Rapidly entrainable tidal vertical migrations in the salt marsh snail Littoraria irrorata. Estuaries 24: 808-816.

Hovel, K.A. and R.N. Lipcius. 2001. Habitat fragmentation in a seagrass landscape: patch size and complexity control blue crab survival. Ecology 82: 1814-1829.

KAH January 2, 2007

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