The grant will support 2 PhD students and one post-doctoral researched to develop a mechanistically underpinned Ocean Systems Ecology that describes and models marine ecosystems and their functions based on first principles.
The grant supports three interlinked projects. The first explores the fluid dynamics of foraging trade-offs in microbial grazers with a focus on predatory flagellates. Flagellates that create a feeding current also create fluid disturbances that attract their flow sensing predators, hence the trade-off. The project will combine visualizations of feeding flows with computational fluid dynamics to solve the governing Navier-Stokes equations. The mechanistically underpinned and quantified trade-offs feed into our recently developed first-principle based NUM model framework of pelagic ecosystems (Nutrients-Unicellular organisms-Multicellular organisms). We will us this framework to examine the implications of diversity along the foraging – predation risk trade-off for pelagic ecosystem functions (production, efficiency, and losses). The third project will then use the updated NUM modelling framework to address a complex aspect of pelagic ecosystems, namely the interrelationship between the biological carbon pump, vertical migration and oxygen minimum zones. Globally, the oxygen minimum zones are expanding for reasons that are not understood. The project is scheduled to start early 2022 and will last for 3 years. Recruitment of students has begun.