Persistent Digital Identifiers (UIDs)
ORCID :
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8172-7855
ResearcherID :
GWN-1019-2022
Subject Area
Biological Oceanography, Marine Ecology
Climatology, Meteorology
Fisheries, Aquaculture
Physical Oceanography
Activities
The reason I changed fields in 2013, moving from Neurobiology to Marine Biology research, was so that my efforts could have positive environmental impacts. Throughout my PhD and now during my post-doctoral research, my goal has always been to develop and apply multidisciplinary approaches to address conservation and environmental management issues.
To investigate population structure in Antarctic fish species, multidisciplinary methods are essential to understanding the complex interplay between oceanography and life history. My PhD research on the population connectivity and ecological dynamics of Antarctic silverfish (Pleuragramma antarctica) utilized two complementary methods, genetics and otolith chemistry, allowing me to combine metrics of relatedness (genetics) and provenance (otoliths) to test a series of population hypotheses. This work emphasized the importance of current systems in Antarctic fish life history connectivity.
My first postdoctoral project, fulled funded by the Humboldt foundation, built on the techniques used in my PhD to address similar questions in Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni), a commercially exploited species. Working closely with fisheries management organizations, I continued to forge multidisciplinary partnerships during this project – working between multiple institutions to combine genomics and otolith trace element analysis approaches to test population connectivity hypotheses in toothfish.
Currently, I am engaged in my second independently funded postdoctoral research project, now based in France. I won funding from the Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace to develop collaborations between climate research laboratories within the institute. In my new role, I manage a team of collaborators to combine genomics and ecological approaches to predict the impacts of climate change on species using species distribution and hydrographic modelling approaches.