[All-postdocs] Bioseminar Joel Llopiz

[Ana M Velez]

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Biology Department Seminar
Thursday, June 30, 2022 - 12:00 Noon

Joel Llopiz
Associate Scientist, WHOI Biology Department

Tales of the Planktivores: Forage Fish Ecology in the Northeast US Shelf and Slope Ecosystems
The continental shelf ecosystem off the northeast United States has long experienced human impacts from fishing, but it also undergoing rapid change associated with climate impacts-faster than most other regions of the world. However, our understanding of how such stressors cascade throughout the ecosystem is limited. Small pelagic fishes, or forage fishes, represent a critical trophic connection between planktonic production and large predators. While we know that small pelagics broadly consume zooplankton, the taxonomic resolution of their diet and the carbon pathways they represent has been limited, especially in the western North Atlantic. Similarly, we have a poor understanding of how bottom-up changes, including those related to physical properties (e.g. temperature) or zooplankton abundance and composition, alter forage fish feeding, condition, distribution, and abundance. In our lab, we currently have several projects, either recently completed or still ongoing, focused on the important forage fish species in the NE US shelf ecosystem and offshore in mesopelagic waters. I will highlight results and future activities from four of them. Among these is a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project focused on the NE US shelf and elucidating the important linkages from physics through plankton to small pelagic fish, including how and why the trophic role of small pelagic species can change. Other work has been centered specifically on northern sand lance and how bottom-up processes and larval dispersal variability can lead to the enormous spatial and temporal fluctuations in their abundance. Finally, our work on the forage fish of the open ocean-mesopelagic fish-is contributing to the multifaceted understanding we are gaining in the Ocean Twilight Zone project.

HYBRID! In person: Redfield Auditorium  Zoom: https://whoi-edu.zoom.us/j/97243583243 Meeting ID: 972 4358 3243    By dial: Find your local number: https://whoi-edu.zoom.us/u/aF1VZiGSz
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