Latest Andrew Altieri Stories

In 1988, a mysterious invader washed upon the New Jersey shore. The Asian shore crab likely arrived in ballast from commercial ships, and it found its new home to be quite agreeable. More than two decades later, the crab, Hemigrapsus sanguineus, has expanded its range along the Atlantic coast northward to Maine and southward to North Carolina. Its numbers continue to expand, and wildlife biologists have found them in greater densities along New England's cobbled shores.Another tale of an...

A U.S. ecologist says he's found a commercially valuable species of clam thriving in oxygen-depleted waters of a so-called "dead zone" off the East Coast. Andrew Altieri, a post-doctoral researcher at Brown University, discovered the population of quahog clams increased in hypoxic zones, defined as areas in which dissolved oxygen in the water has been depleted. He said he determined whether quahog clams have a natural capacity to survive in oxygen-starved waters, but their predators cannot....

Coastal dead zones, an increasing concern to ecologists, the fishing industry and the public, may not be as devoid of life after all. A Brown scientist has found that dead zones do indeed support marine life, and that at least one commercially valuable clam actually benefits from oxygen-depleted waters.Andrew Altieri, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University, studied dead zones in Narragansett Bay, one of the largest estuaries on the...