My research connects individual animals to ecosystem-scale change. Large-scale models reveal the patterns, individual-based models recover the mechanisms behind them, and together they support applied decisions.
An ecosystem model of the deep-pelagic Gulf built to estimate mortality following the 2010 oil spill and forecast the food web's response. About one quarter of trophic interactions shifted in strength from 2011 to 2018, an early warning of indirect change.
An ecosystem model comparing the predatory impact of recovering marine mammals and seabirds with the exploitative impact of industrial fisheries. Population changes in top predators had limited impact on fisheries catches, supporting an ecosystem-based view of apparent competition.
A U.S. Gulf-wide Ecopath with Ecosim and Ecospace model incorporating spatial-temporal environmental drivers, used to identify the reef fish "winners" and "losers" of a changing ocean and to separate environmental from fishing effects.
A Julia agent-based ecosystem model in which each animal moves through 3D space under temperature-dependent bioenergetics, with size- and distance-based predation so diets and functional responses emerge rather than being prescribed. Runs large simulations on hybrid GPU–CPU hardware.
A cloud-based agent-based model for fisheries assessment, built with NOAA's Office of Science and Technology, that integrates oceanographic and trait databases to predict fish bioenergetics, movement, and survival with an accessible visual interface.
A trait-based, individual-scale model of active carbon transport. In the oceanic Gulf of Mexico, the mesopelagic community transports 11 to 24% of dissolved organic carbon each year, an effort led by lanternfishes.
A spatially explicit, individual-based model of the "whale pump." Most transported nitrogen originates in the upper mesopelagic and adds an estimated 8 to 16% to surface ammonium, a meaningful contribution in a nutrient-limited system.
Bringing ecosystem context into a single-species stock assessment, evaluating environmental and trophic drivers of Gulf of America King Mackerel to inform the SEDAR 99 assessment.
Quantifying the ecological outcomes of mesophotic and deep benthic community restoration in the Gulf, funded by the Deepwater Horizon Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group.
Leading a multi-institutional NCEAS working group assessing how marine artificial structures reshape reef fish communities, coordinating systematic mapping, time-series, and ecosystem-modeling subgroups to inform where structures are placed and removed.
A high-resolution Ecospace model for the Florida Keys and Florida Bay that integrates downscaled CMIP6 climate projections to predict habitat persistence and species distribution shifts, and tests whether restoration can offset climate effects.
Coupling Ecopath with Ecosim models to an IMPLAN economic model to estimate how oyster restoration and seagrass change affect the regional commercial fishing economy, showing that oyster and vegetation habitats must be managed together.