MOLLY KRESSLER
PHD CANDIDATE
Seascapes of Ecological Energy
University of Exeter in partnership with BBFSF
I am a behavioural marine ecologist studying for a PhD at the University of Exeter in partnership with the Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation. I am interested in studying core principles of behavioural ecology in marine ecosystems, using modern statistical and modelling approaches to address pressing questions in marine conservation.
Currently for my PhD thesis I work with historic datasets from Bimini, Bahamas, and study the ecology of juvenile lemon sharks. Part of the thesis defines a novel conceptual framework for studying animal behaviour in the marine environment and has been developed as a tool for researchers interested in studying marine vertebrate behaviour in the contemporary marine environment, taking a holistic and hierarchical perspective on the possible drivers of behaviour. It is our aim that this framework will enable marine ecologists to work towards more realistic predictions of marine vertebrates behaviour in an ever-evolving contemporary seascape, and highlight the possibilities that lie in the data that already exists in all our databases.
In my work, I use the framework to study the behaviour of juvenile lemon sharks, in a mangrove nursery, in Bimini, Bahamas. I dabble in Bayesian statistics and employ habitat and resource selection functions to help tease apart the drivers of spatial behaviour in an early-life stage of this IUCN listed Vulnerable species.
Study System & Species
Negaprion brevirostris
I work with juvenile lemon sharks, on the remote island of Bimini, in The Bahamas. This subpopulation of sharks is natally philopatric, meaning the females give birth in the mangroves where they themselves were born. The juveniles then stay around in the nursery lagoon habitat for five years. This study system offers the opportunity for replicate sampling of the same individuals - a rare thing in a wild marine environment.
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My data comes from multiple collaborators to whom I am very grateful.
Research Questions
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Seascapes of Ecological Energy: a novel conceptual framework for the contemporary marine environment. How can we consolidate decades of progress in terrestrial, aquatic, laboratory, and marine behavioural research, into a guide for current and future researchers in the marine environment?
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Are habitat selection models an accurate prediction tool for a juvenile marine vertebrate in a tidal lagoon nursery? A comparison and discussion of refined shortest path analysis and presence-absence habitat selection models.
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Are juvenile lemon sharks responding to the distribution of their key prey items? An updated evaluation of juvenile predators and prey interactions, integrating independent studies of teleost and elasmobranchs, using resource selection functions and acoustic telemetry.
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Seascapes of Fear - how do juvenile lemon sharks behaviourally respond to low and high risk regimes?
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Are the effects from ecological considerations like habitat, resource distribution, and a seascape of fear, multiplicative, additive or dominating? Evaluating the holistic perspective of life as a juvenile lemon shark.
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Following a period of perturbation, did juvenile lemon sharks switch their diet? A case study of consequences to the realised SEE, following intense coastal development for juvenile IUCN-listed Vulnerable lemon sharks.
