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Global environmental drivers of marine fish egg size

Our findings support results from Rass (1941) and some predictions from Winemiller and Rose (1992). The effects of environmental means and predictability on marine fish egg size are largely consistent with those observed in marine invertebrates with feeding larvae, suggesting important commonalities in how ectotherm egg size responds to environmental change. Our results further suggest that anthropogenically-mediated changes in the environment will have profound effects on the distribution of marine life histories.

Fish reproductive-energy output increases disproportionately with body size

Body size determines total reproductive-energy output. Most theories assume reproductive output is a fixed proportion of size, with respect to mass, but formal macroecological tests are lacking. Management based on that assumption risks underestimating the contribution of larger mothers to replenishment...

The energetics of fish growth and how it constrains food-web trophic structure

The allocation of metabolic energy to growth fundamentally influences all levels of biological organisation. Here we use a first‐principles theoretical model to characterise the energetics of fish growth at distinct ontogenetic stages and in distinct thermal regimes...

Marine invertebrates metabolism

Developing statistical tools to understand the metabolic rates of marine invertebrates.

Networks in nature

Exploring methods and patterns of ecological networks.

Reef fish macroecology and evolution

Reef fish ecology and evolution at broad scales.

Scaling

Linking biological levels of organisation through energetics.

Do low oxygen environments facilitate marine invasions? Relative tolerance of native and invasive species to low oxygen conditions

Biological invasions are one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity. Marine artificial structures are proliferating worldwide and provide a haven for marine invasive species. Such structures disrupt local hydrodynamics, which can lead to the formation of oxygen-depleted microsites...

Estimating monotonic rates from biological data using local linear regression

Accessing many fundamental questions in biology begins with empirical estimation of simple monotonic rates of underlying biological processes. Across a variety of disciplines, ranging from physiology to biogeochemistry, these rates are routinely estimated from non-linear and noisy time series data using linear regression and ad hoc manual truncation of non-linearities...

Isolation drives taxonomic and functional nestedness in tropical reef fish faunas

Taxonomic nestedness, the degree to which the taxonomic composition of species-poor assemblages represents a subset of richer sites, commonly occurs in habitat fragments and islands differing in size and isolation from a source pool. However, species are not ecologically equivalent and the extent to which nestedness is observed in terms of functional trait composition of assemblages still remains poorly known...