Spatial Modelling of Marine Zooplankton Population Dynamics

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics has a vacancy for a MASTS (http://www.masts.ac.uk/index.aspx) funded PhD studentship.

Marine copepods of the genus Calanus are among the most widespread and abundant zooplanktonic organisms of the North Atlantic. They are extremely important secondary producers, and a major source of food for a wide range of organisms from commercially exploited fish stocks, such as herring and larval cod, to right whales. In subarctic waters two species, the subtropical C. helgolandicus and the boreal C. finmarchicus, dominate. Despite considerable differences in their ranges, there is also a great deal of overlap, especially in the North Eastern Atlantic and European shelf seas. In this region there is an inverse relationship between the abundances of the two species. This project will employ new developments in spatial population modelling techniques in order to produce a spatial population model of C. helgolandicus over its entire geographic range.

The key questions which the project will address are, a) what are the dynamically significant differences between C. finmarchicus and C. helgolandicus and how may they be represented an a spatially explicit model b) how do these differences affect the responses of those species to historical decadal changes in temperature and currents, and c) what are the impacts of climate change projections on the species dynamics and geographic distributions? The results will contribute to an understanding of the demography of this species in relation to its physical environment and its more northerly congener.

The project would suit someone wishing use and develop his or her quantitative skills towards a career in fisheries science or mathematical ecology. Candidates should possess or expect to obtain a first class honours degree or a postgraduate qualification in applied mathematics, statistics, or any quantitative natural science.

The project will be supervised by Dr Douglas Speirs and Prof. Mike Heath and based in the MASTS Marine Population Modelling Group at Strathclyde University (http://www.mathstat.strath.ac.uk/research/groups/pme/mpm).

The University of Strathclyde is a leading international research university and in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, in terms of research power, the Mathematics and Statistics department was rated 2nd in Scotland and 12th in the UK as a whole. MASTS is a Scottish Funding Council supported pooling initiative involving the major marine science institutes in Scotland.