University of Tasmania, Australia

Reconstructing regional food webs from observational data.

Level: PhD

Many diet studies have been carried out over the last few decades in the Southern Ocean. Data from several hundred such studies have recently been collated into a single database (Raymond et al. 2011). However, reconstructing regional food webs from such data is challenging. Studies tend to be biased in many ways (i.e. accessible predators, identifiable prey). The taxonomic resolution of prey identification varies across studies. Species vary in their regional distributions, and so a trophic interaction observed in one region may or may not be relevant for a different region.

This project would consider methods for reconstructing regional food webs, using a range of data (including direct diet observations, isotope and genetic information, and trait information such as body size, morphology, and feeding habits). The project will consider appropriate methods for extracting and preprocessing diet data (dealing with e.g. taxonomic resolution and grouping issues), and appropriate statistical models for inferring the species interactions, possibly including qualitative modelling or presence-only (e.g. Maxent) approaches.

The methods developed in this project will feed into ecosystem modelling efforts that require knowledge of regional species interactions.

Supervisor: Ben Raymond