Abstract:Understanding the individual and interactive roles of consumer species is more than academic when the host plant is a subject of intense conservation interest. In a mesocosm experiment, we compared effects of common invertebrate grazers in San Francisco Bay seagrass (Zostera marina, eelgrass) beds, finding that some species (a native opisthobranch, Phyllaplysia taylori; a native isopod, Idotea resecata; and an introduced gastropod, Ilyanassa obsoleta) enhanced eelgrass growth through removal of epiphytic algae, as is often predicted for small invertebrate grazers on seagrasses, while one (an introduced caprellid amphipod, Caprella cf. drepanochir) had neutral effects. In contrast, the putatively-introduced gammaridean amphipod, Ampithoe valida, had strong negative effects on eelgrass (in addition to epiphytes) through consumption, as we had previously observed in the field during restoration programs. We tested whether other common grazer species could influence the effects of the eelgrass-grazing Ampithoe, and found that Idotea induced production of phenolic compounds and limited eelgrass damage by Ampithoe, without affecting Ampithoe abundance. These results have implications for restoration strategies, and contribute to a growing awareness of the importance of trait-mediated indirect grazer interactions through grazer-induced changes in plant traits, providing the first example in a seagrass system.

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The experience of this spring‐pin manufacturer illustrates how a small company can resolve environmental problems “in‐house” with a minimum of professional assistance—and only minor capital expenditures.

The Internet holds vast stores of information pertaining to pollution prevention and environmental issues, and with each day more is added. Yet, as this storehouse grows, the difficulv of finding specific information increases. This article details how EnviroDaemon was built to ease the task offinding this information and knowledge base. I t automatically builds and updates a catalogof objects at preselected Internetsites thatare related to pollution prevention. Userssearch for information by submitting keywords. Searches can be restricted tosmall subsets of the indexed sites by choosing one offive search criteria, or the entire catalog can be searched. The results are returned rapidly and are embedded in several lines of text to provide context. If the text looks promising, the user can click on a hyperlink to access the full article.Since its release in March, EnviroDaemon has seen increasing use, especially following its demonstration at the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable Conference. The authors also discuss the process of building this search engine to show interested readers how to create other environmental custom search engines.

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