Bigger is better when it comes to female fish and feeding the planet
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.
Research fellow position: Life History Empiricist
The Centre for Geometric Biology is currently seeking to recruit an experienced zooplankton biologist.
Conference updates 2018
Giulia Ghedini and Dustin Marshall are off to New England while Louise Solveig Nørgaard and Martino Malerba are in southern France.
Causes and consequences of variation in offspring size
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.
Time to go back to school? Geometry helps predict change in ecosystem function
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.
A global synthesis of offspring size variation, its eco‐evolutionary causes and consequences
Published in Functional Ecology.
School visit
The Centre’s Belinda Comerford and Liz Morris visited the grade 5/6 students at Windsor Primary School.
Focus on PhD research
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.
MacArthur or MacMartha? Mixed support for MacArthur’s minimisation principle
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.
Testing MacArthur’s minimisation principle: do communities minimise energy wastage during succession?
Published in Ecology Letters.
Fish reproductive-energy output increases disproportionately with body size
Published in Science.
