Curtis Horne is a new visitor in Centre for Ocean Life. He will be using the existing copepod cultures at DTU Aqua to study the effects of temperature on growth and development in pelagic copepods. Specifically, he aims to compare the sensitivity of body size to warming in species with different feeding strategies.
From April to Juli Curtis Horne will visit our Centre. Here he introduces himself:
I am a visiting PhD student (April-July 2015) from Queen Mary University of London, UK.
I have a broad range of interests within marine ecology and conservation, particularly phenotypic plasticity and the ability of organisms to adapt to global change. My former research experience includes the in-water assessment of juvenile hard coral recruitment and recovery in the Seychelles, and the monitoring of nesting Mediterranean Green and Loggerhead sea turtles.
My current work examines the mechanisms and drivers of the Temperature-Size Rule; a within species relationship in ectotherms which states that individuals reared at warmer temperatures will mature to a smaller adult size. My experimental work at DTU Aqua will test the hypothesis that temperature-size responses are driven by differences in feeding strategy in pelagic copepods, in particular between those that feed using a current and those which are ambush predators.
Research group website: www.aquatic-ecology.co.uk
Publications
Horne, C. R., Hirst, A., & Atkinson, D. (2015). Temperature‐size responses match latitudinal‐size clines in arthropods, revealing critical differences between aquatic and terrestrial species. Ecology letters, 18(4), 327-335.
Horne, C. R., Fuller, W. J., Godley, B. J., Rhodes, K. A., Snape, R., Stokes, K. L., & Broderick, A. C. (2014). The effect of thermal variance on the phenotype of marine turtle offspring. Physiological and biochemical zoology: PBZ, 87(6), 796-804.