Scaling

This project aims to quantify how energy requirements and usage scale within and across individuals, from populations to ecosystems. The first goal is to characterise the mass and temperature dependence of marine ectotherms' metabolism (Barneche et al. 2014; Barneche et al. 2017; Barneche & Allen 2018). The second goal is to combine mathematical theory with Bayesian statistics to scale energy from individuals to higher levels of biological organisation in order to test predictions on how body mass, temperature and traits constrain nutrient recycling (Barneche & Allen 2015), population density (Barneche et al. 2016), community biomass production and energy flux (Barneche et al. 2014, and the shape of trophic pyramids (Barneche et al. 2018a). The third goal of this project is to describe how assimilated energy gets allocated over ontogeny to growth (Barneche et al. 2018a) and reproduction (Barneche et al. 2018b). The ultimate goal of this project is to use theory-driven fundamental science to better inform decision-making processes and ecosystem management in an ever-changing world.