Jonathan Shurin

About

Dr. Jonathan Shurin is a Professor in the Section of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, which is part of the Division of Biology at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a member of the San Diego Center for Algal Biotechnology. His laboratory focuses on studying the causes and consequences of variation in species diversity, the flow of energy between producers and consumers, and the impacts of predators on the functioning of ecosystems. Through his research, Dr. Shurin aims to understand ecological dynamics and evolutionary processes that shape biodiversity and ecosystem function.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Biology
• Ecology
• Fishery
• Geography
• Environmental protection

Selected publications

• Current water quality guidelines across North America and Europe do not protect lakes from salinization

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 106 citations

  thresholds across North America and Europe clearly do not adequately protect lake food webs. Water quality guidelines should be developed where they do not exist, and there is an urgent need to reassess existing guidelines to protect lake ecosystems from human-induced salinization.

  DOI

• Cascading social-ecological costs and benefits triggered by a recovering keystone predator

  Science · 2020 · 100 citations

  Predator recovery often leads to ecosystem change that can trigger conflicts with more recently established human activities. In the eastern North Pacific, recovering sea otters are transforming coastal systems by reducing populations of benthic invertebrates and releasing kelp forests from grazing pressure. These changes threaten established shellfish fisheries and modify a variety of other ecosystem services. The diverse social and economic consequences of this trophic cascade are unknown, par…

  DOI

• Interacting Temperature, Nutrients and Zooplankton Grazing Control Phytoplankton Size-Abundance Relationships in Eight Swiss Lakes

  Frontiers in Microbiology · 2020 · 62 citations

  Biomass distribution among size classes follows a power law where the Log-abundance of taxa scales to Log-size with a slope that responds to environmental abiotic and biotic conditions. The interactions between ecological mechanisms controlling the slope of locally realized size-abundance relationships (SAR) are however not well understood. Here we tested how warming, nutrient levels, and grazing affect the slope of phytoplankton community SARs in decadal time-series from eight Swiss lakes of th…

  DOI

• Causes and consequences of recent degradation of the Magdalena River basin, Colombia

  Limnology and Oceanography Letters · 2022-07-26 · 30 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The Magdalena River in Colombia is one of the world's largest (discharge = 7100 m 3 s −1 ) tropical rivers, hosting > 170 aquatic vertebrate species. However, concise synthesis of the current ecological and environmental status is lacking. By documenting the anthropogenic stressors impacting the river on time scales ranging from centuries to decades, we found that the river system is subject to the compounding impacts of climate change, river impoundment, invasive alien species (IAS)…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Widespread variation in salt tolerance within freshwater zooplankton species reduces the predictability of community‐level salt tolerance

  Limnology and Oceanography Letters · 2022-08-24 · 25 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The salinization of freshwaters is a global threat to aquatic biodiversity. We quantified variation in chloride (Cl − ) tolerance of 19 freshwater zooplankton species in four countries to answer three questions: (1) How much variation in Cl − tolerance is present among populations? (2) What factors predict intraspecific variation in Cl − tolerance? (3) Must we account for intraspecific variation to accurately predict community Cl − tolerance? We conducted field mesocosm experiments at 1…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Combined impacts of temperature and trophic cascades in mountain lakes

  NSF · $503k · 2015–2018

• BEE- Ecology of adaptation to food quality by genes and microbiomes in lake plankton

  NSF · $1.2M · 2020–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Dana Haggarty

  Fisheries and Oceans Canada

  21 shared

• Pavel Kratina

  20 shared

• Patrick L. Thompson

  Fisheries and Oceans Canada

  19 shared

• Hamish S. Greig

  University of Maine

  19 shared

• Celia C. Symons

  University of California, Irvine

  16 shared

• Eric W. Seabloom

  University of Minnesota

  15 shared

• Natalie T. Jones

  Victoria University of Wellington

  15 shared

• John E. Havel

  Missouri State University

  13 shared

Labs

• Shurin LabPI

Education

• Ph.D, Ecology and Evolution

  University of Chicago

  2000

Similar researchers at University of California, San Diego

• Elsa Clelandh-70
• Dominik Wodarzh-55
• Kaustuv Royh-54