Elisabeth Myers

Citation

Thesis Title
Functional biodiversity of New Zealand's marine fishes versus depth and latitude

Understanding how biodiversity varies along large gradients, such as depth and latitude, is a key question in ecology. One aspect of biodiversity is the study of the functional traits of animals. Miss Myers studied how the key fish functions of food acquisition and locomotion changed along a depth gradient of between 50m and 1200m. Miss Myers’ study also spanned the latitudinal range of New Zealand, from the subtropical Kermadec Islands to the subAntarctic Auckland Islands. Miss Myers used baited video cameras deployed to the seafloor, and preserved museum specimens to collect data for 144 New Zealand marine fish species. She has expanded our understanding of the drivers governing biodiversity in the deep sea. She has also developed novel ways of capturing variation in the traits of fishes, and provided a baseline against which to measure future studies.

Supervisors
Distinguished Professor Marti Anderson
Professor Euan Harvey
Dr Clive Roberts
Dr David Eme
Associate Professor Libby Liggins