Bruce A. Menge is an American ocean ecologist. He has spent over forty years studying the processes that drive the dynamics of natural communities. His fields of interest include: structure and dynamics of marine meta-ecosystems, responses of coastal ecosystems to climate change, linking benthic and inner shelf pelagic communities, the relationship between scale and ecosystem dynamics, bottom-up and top-down control of community structure, recruitment dynamics, ecophysiology and sub-organismal mechanisms in environmental stress models, larval transport and connectivity, impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems, controls of productivity, population, community, and geographical ecology. He settled on two career goals: carrying out experiment-based field research to investigate the dynamics of rocky intertidal communities, focusing on species interactions and environmental context and how this might shape a community, and using the resulting data to test and modify theories on how communities were organized.
Menge and his wife, both faculty members at Oregon State University, split a single professorship into two half-time positions. Each holds an endowed title as Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology. For the next five years, they will focus their expertise on a $17.7 million research project to study the ecology and conservation of coastal Pacific Ocean marine life. Over the next five years, the research goals of PISCO are to understand the impacts of climate change on large marine ecosystems, to further the theory and application of marine reserves, and to help inform the sustainable management of marine resources.
2011e. Barshis, D. J., E. E. Sotka, R. P. Kelly, A. Sivasundar, B. A. Menge, J. A. Barth, and S. R. Palumbi. Coastal upwelling and sweepstakes recruitment in the acorn barnacle Balanus glandula. Marine Ecology Progress Series.
2011f. Menge, B. A. Northern California Current. Pp. xxx-xxx in Encyclopedia for Climate and Weather, Second Edition. S. Schneider, editor in chief. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK..
2011g. Menge, B. A., T. L. Freidenburg and A. Iles. Keystone species. Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, 2nd Edition. S. A. Levin, editor-in-chief. Academic Press, New York, NY.
2011h. Gouhier, T. C., B. A. Menge, and S. D. Hacker. Recruitment facilitation can promote coexistence and buffer population growth in metacommunities. Ecology Letters.
2011i. Place, S. P., B. A. Menge, and G. E. Hofmann. Transcriptome profiling of environmental and physiological linkages in complex ecosystems. Functional Ecology.
2012a. Menge, B. A. and E. Sanford. Ecological role of sea stars from populations to meta-ecosystems. Ch. 7 in J. M. Lawrence, ed. Asteroidea: Biology and Ecology of Starfish. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD..
2012b. Menge, B. A. A journey towards rocky intertidal meta-ecosystem ecology.. Invited essay in, C. Hurd, P. J. Harrison, C. S. Lobban and K. Bischoff, Seaweed Ecology and Physiology, 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.