ALIÉNOR STAHL

Predicting freshwater fish biomass from foodwebs

I’m passionate about aquatic life; whether it’s about marine or freshwater environments. I’m particularly interested in studying fishes. I completed an internship on eel behavior in a large lake and studied how it changed as migration cues appeared. We also studied reasons as to why some eels failed to leave the lake. My master’s thesis was done on fish aesthetics, and how we can link aesthetics to functional diversity among other things. We were also able to create a model to calculate the aesthetic value of a location based on the composition of the fish community. It was particularly interesting to change scale and go from studying individuals, to a population, to a community.

My PhD project is going to focus on fish communities. I will be attempting to model fish biomass based on the presence/absence of fishes and species co-distribution. As I’m only starting, my goals may evolve.