Fernanda Valdovinos

Associate Professor, Environmental Science & Policy, University of California, Davis

Informing fishery sustainability with network ecology

April 14, 2021 - 12:00 PM Eastern Time

Talk Abstract:

The world is facing a fisheries crisis, with fish stocks and marine ecosystems collapsing due to human over-exploitation. Understanding the interconnectedness among species in harvested ecosystems and the dynamic responses of ecosystems to fishing is critical for informing managing practices to attain fisheries’ sustainability. Two of our recent publications evaluate such interconnectedness among dozens of species in harvested ecosystems using network analysis, mathematical models and computational tools. First, we investigate the combined effects of artisanal fisheries and climate change on an intertidal food web of the Central Coast of Chile. We show that climate change has a stronger effect on the food web than artisanal fisheries. Second, we incorporate economic rules governing fish extraction based on fish price and yield to evaluate how economic dynamics affect food webs and cause species extinctions. Our work exemplifies the importance of studying the effects of fisheries on the entire food web, instead of only focusing on the target species, and of introducing humans as dynamic components into food web models to answer questions of fisheries sustainability.

Speaker Bio:

I am a theoretical ecologists and network scientist studying the structure and dynamics of ecosystems facing anthropogenic perturbations. I focus on the mechanisms empirical research has shown to be important for the dynamics of ecological systems. I integrate those mechanisms into mathematical models of ecological networks that I interrogate using computers, mathematical analysis and biological intuition, and whose predictions I test with empirical data.