Modeling zooplankton and fish in space and time, and under climate change MASTS webinar with Doug Speirs (University of Strathclyde) - free

Marine zooplankton and fish species often have very wide, but continuous, geographic distributions in which individuals move or are transported by ocean currents over large distances. They also often have complicated life cycles involving physiologically different developmental stages. As a consequence, species can occur over an enormous range of environments, including food abundance and temperature, in which different life-history stages may respond variably.

Combing these considerations in population models capable of capturing the dynamics of such species and their changing spatial distributions in response to changing environments poses serious modelling challenges. This talk will overview the development at the University of Strathclyde of an approach to combining physiological spatial structure in marine population models. Examples will be drawn from modelling and mesopelagic fish, and zooplankton in the Arctic under climate change.