Mark Bertness

Mark Bertness (born July 13, 1949) is an American ecologist, known for his work on the community assembly of marine shoreline communities.[1]

Mark David Bertness

Among his important work are the Stress Gradient Hypothesis (Bertness and Callaway 1994[2]) that predicts that positive species interactions are more important in biologically and physically stressful habitats than in biologically and physically benign habitats, his experimental research in a variety of marine intertidal communities elucidating the roles of biotic interaction across intertidal gradients[3][4] (Bertness and Hacker 1994,[5] Bertness et al. 1999,[6] Bertness 1999[7]), his pioneering of experimental community ecology in salt marsh ecosystems[8][9] and his work on apex predator depletion causing die-offs in salt marshes due to the release of herbivores from predator control [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]

He is the Robert P. Brown Professor of Biology and chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University[17] and has had visiting distinguished appointments at Groningen University, the Netherlands,[18] the Catholic University of Santiago, Chile[19] and the University of Sassari, Sardinia, Italy.[20]

In 2002 Bertness was designated as an ISI Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher in Environmental Science;[21] this indicates that Dr. Bertness was among the 250 most-cited researchers in Environmental Science during a certain period of time.[22] In 2009, Bertness was recognized as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science;[23] this fellowship is a recognition of an individual's meritorious efforts to advance science or its applications.[24] Bertness is also a trustee of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom.[25]