Kirsten Abernethy
Fishing for what? Fisher decision making in the South-west of England.
Kirsten Abernethy is busy reconciling the divergent views of her three supervisors (an ecologist, and economist and a social scientist). When she is not doing that she is working in SW England, interviewing fishermen and getting them to participate in experimental lotteries to learn how they make decisions and weigh up risks. And on the side she is exploring the effects of the recent fuel price crisis on the different fleets and sectors of the fishery.

www.uea.ac.uk/dev/people/students/A-E/Abernethy

Shay O’Farrell
Climate change, fishing and the comparative demography of parrotfishes
I work on the interacting effects of fishing pressure and sea temperature increase on the demographics of three species of Caribbean parrotfishes, Scarus vetula, S. iserti and Sparisoma aurofrenatum. These forcings are likely to act to drive down the average body size, and thus grazing capacity, of the three species, with profound implications for the fisheries management of scarids.

www.projects.exeter.ac.uk/msel/personnel/so.html

Katie Newton
Social and ecological resilience of coral reef fisheries
Katie Newton is working on the larger-scale drivers and effects or coral reef fisheries. She is currently exploring fishing down and fishing through coral reef foodwebs and the maximum sustainable yield of coral reef fisheries.

www.uea.ac.uk/~mhe06qau/coralgroup_files/Page672.htm

Lorenzo Alvarez
Large-scale coral reef ecology
Lorenzo Alvarez is exploring the links between changing coral cover and the impact on architectural complexity and the associate coral reef fish communities. He combines Caribbean-wide meta-analyses of change with field studies of spatial gradients in habitat quality.

www.uea.ac.uk/~mhe06qau/

Maria Jose Juan Jordes
Life histories and population dynamics of mackerels, tunas and billfishes (Scombridae)
Maria JJJ is technically not a PhD student of mine, but I am helping her with comparative analyses of life history variation, life history invariants and environmental variability in scombrids.

Maria's page: http://www.recursosmarinos.net/?page_id=24

Global Tuna and Mackerel Analysis: http://faneca.net/scombrids/project/index.html

Chris Mull
Maternal investment and brain evolution in sharks, rays & chimaeras
Chris is working with Kara Yopak to determine the sequence and correlates of the evolution of the diversity of reproductive modes in chondrichthyans. In particular, he is keen to understand the possible links between the degree of maternal investment in offspring and brain development.

http://www.sfu.ca/~cmull/

Jenn Sunday
Thermal niche width and geographic range size
Jenn Sunday is not actually working on sea stars for this project. Under the kind blessing of her actual PhD supervisor (Mike Hart) she is undertaking a substantial and temporary digression. She is working on the link between thermal niche width and geographic range size in ectotherms.

www.sfu.ca/~sunday/Hart_Lab

Rowan Trebilco
The role of apex predators in reef ecosystems
Rowan aims to tease apart the role that apex predators play in structuring temperate and tropical reef ecosystems, and how human impacts - such as fishing and habitat degradation - have altered this dynamic. He, along with co-supervisors Julia Baum and Anne Salomon, hopes to use this information to infer what unimpacted reef communities should look like and to help guide management strategies that account for the role of large top predators in healthy and productive reef ecosystems.

www.sfu.ca/~rtrebilc

Rémi Vergnon
Size spectra and community dynamics in aquatic ecosystems.
Macroecologists and fisheries scientists are interested in the flow of energy via abundance and biomass of individuals across size classes. Ecologists are interested in the partitioning of abundance among species. Surely we can find a way to predict species richness across mass classes? Well if we can’t quite do that yet then let’s reconcile niche and neutral theories to provide the first empirical evidence that a combined niche-neutral (emergent neutrality) model best explains the persistent lumpiness of phytoplankton species size spectra.

www.shef.ac.uk/aps/staff/acadstaff/freckleton.html