This study was conducted as part of a larger effort to look at potential indirect effects of cleaner fish on coral reefs. Cleaners are likely to have indirect effects on the reefs they occupy because they attract and concentrate a wide variety of different client fish to their territories. While client fish visit cleaner stations in order to have ectoparasites removed by the cleaner, they are also involved in other activities (such as feeding) during their visits, and these activities can affect the fish, algae, corals, and other invertebrates that inhabit cleaner stations.

 In temperate systems, invertebrate consumers have known impacts to ecosystem processes, but in tropical ecology, it is assumed that only plant and microbes affect these processes. This study investigated what impacts common folivores (walking sticks) and detritivores (litter snails) have on decomposition, nutrient cycling and primary productivity in the understory of the Luquillo rainforest (LUQ). To test these effects, we started an enclosure experiment with consumers both present and absent in 2005.

This workshop has three goals:

1) Inform interested participants about a new way to organize the LTER site information.  We offer the public a view of the information that has no dead-ends, that is, all the content is related, and each website view offers related contextual content, including data, personnel, metadata, projects, and the like.

2) Receive feedback

3) Recruit adopters and developers