Geometric biology allows us to understand the dynamics of how living things convert energy flows into mass, at all scales of biological organisation.
The size and shape (together, the ‘geometry’) of organisms ultimately determine these flows.
The Geometric Theory of Biology allows us to predict how things function, grow, and change; be they tumours, schools of fish, or whole forests.
A new paper led by Centre researchers Diego Barneche, Craig White and Dustin Marshall and published in the prestigious journal Science has confirmed what field biologists have long suggested: that larger mothers reproduced disproportionately much more than smaller ones. The findings clash with current theories and the results have major implications for fisheries, the value placed on marine protected areas, the impacts of climate change and the 20% of people globally who rely on fish for protein.
The Centre for Geometric Biology is currently seeking to recruit an experienced zooplankton biologist.
Giulia Ghedini and Dustin Marshall are off to New England while Louise Solveig Nørgaard and Martino Malerba are in southern France.
Dustin Marshall, Amanda Pettersen and Hayley Cameron were interested in looking at offspring size across all taxa and at different levels of organisation to see if this wider scope could help them better understand the causes and consequences of variation in offspring size.
Humans impact the marine environment through fishing, climate change and the introduction of invasive species. Giulia Ghedini is particularly interested in understanding the impacts of such changes on the way in which communities gain and use energy.
Published in Functional Ecology.
The Centre’s Belinda Comerford and Liz Morris visited the grade 5/6 students at Windsor Primary School.
Amanda Petterson has graduated and moved to Sweden, Alex Gangur is growing copepods in chemostats, Lukas Schuster is comparing metabolic rates of bryozoans under different conditions, and Hayley Cameron wants to know if it’s better for a marine invertebrate to bigger (and fewer) or smaller (and many) when it comes to competing with siblings.
Despite the importance of Robert MacArthur’s niche theory to community ecology, it has received very little testing in real world situations. Giulia Ghedini and colleagues have used a well described and easily manipulated marine invertebrate model system to test this theory.
Published in Ecology Letters.
Published in Science.
