Andrew Brierley 13 Nov 2009

Friday 13 November 2009, 3:30 PM

Prof. Andrew Brierley

Pelagic Ecology Research Group, Gatty Marine Laboratory, University of St Andrews, Scotland

3D structure of Antarctic krill swarms: revealing a 'rule' for geometry of pelagic aggregations.

Multibeam echosounder observations reveal an apparently-conserved feature of krill swarm shape, with surface area to volume ratios remaining stable over a huge range of swarm sizes. The same surface area to volume ratio is also apparent in a variety of clupeid fish from tropical and temperate locations in the Pacific and Atlantic. We explore reasons for this conserved 3D shape. A model considering the benefits to aggregations in terms of predator avoidance and the physiological cost to individuals in terms of oxygen stress suggests that the observed 3D shape is optimal.

Bio: Andrew Brierley is a marine ecologist and biological oceanographer. He has a degree in Marine Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Bangor in North Wales. He studied for his PhD 'Aspects of genetic diversity and population structure in squid' at the University of Liverpool. Andrew worked as a postdoc at the British Antarctic Survey, where his core role was acoustic estimation of krill biomass. Andrew moved to St Andrews in 2001, and has continued his krill-related work. In addition his group are interested in jellyfish/fisheries interaction, Arctic zooplankton ecology, and development of Bayesian analytical techniques to maximise the return from hard-won field data.