Summer Graduations!

I'm delighted to announce that two of my MS students have successfully defended their theses this past semester and are all set to graduate!

Congratulations to Krista Scheuerman and Adam Warren on joining the Seascape Ecology Lab alumni!

Krista's MS work focused on understanding the influence of data analyses treatments on the results of multivariate analyses in a mesopelagic fish assemblage from the Gulf of Mexico, with the aim of identifying levels of taxonomic equivalence that might help us make future survey programs more efficient. She is currently preparing a manuscript based on this work, but in the meantime you can read her full thesis here: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hcas_etd_all/99/

nMDS showing the similarities between data under different transformations and at different taxonomic resolutions.

Adam Warren's thesis topic involved studying changes in the mean lengths of several common lanternfish species in the years following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (2011 - 2017) using Generalized Least Squares (GLS) modelling. During this time period, we have observed a substantial decline in lanternfishes, and so the aim of this project was to establish whether these declines were also associated with a change in the size structure of these common species. A paper is currently in preparation which will update the analyses through to 2023, but you can read his full thesis here: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hcas_etd_all/98/

Example time series showing the mean lengths of a common lanternfish over the 2011 - 2017 time period at the most common depths of occurrence for the species. Data were analyzed with GLS models.