Boris Jovanovic examines fish community structure as part of a UCD CoBiD-UREKA research group
UCD undergraduate students have authored a new scientific report on the fish that live around Bull Island, Dublin. Their paper, entitled “Fish community structure and distribution in a macro-tidal inshore habitat in the Irish Sea” will be published in the international journal Estuarine, Coastal, and Shelf Science. Their publication is based on a UREKA summer project led by Dr Stefano Mariani of the School of Biology and Environmental Science as a part of the CoBiD-UREKA summer undergraduate research programme, funded by Science Foundation Ireland. This is the first peer-reviewed publication to result from a UREKA site at UCD.
Lead author on the report, Boris Jovanovic, from Serbia, was one of the first students accepted to the UCD-run summer programme CoBiD-UREKA. The team also included UCD undergraduate students Áine O’Leary and Craig Longmore, who both finished their Zoology degrees in spring 2006.
The research project focussed on the shallow coastal habitats of North Bull Island, to investigate whether the waters around the North Wall are acting as a ‘nursery’ environment for populations of juvenile fish. The UCD team conducted extensive survey work collecting data on the distribution and the number of fish species around the island. They caught 17 species of fish in 13 taxonomic families. The most common fish were two small species: the Lesser Sandeel (Ammodytes tobianus) and the Common Goby (Pomatoschistus microps). With hundreds of fish samples analysed, the Dublin study showed that the community structure is primarily dependent on two factors: habitat variation between open-shore versus mudflat habitats, and the time of the year.
In contrast to previous work, they found that tidal dynamics do not influence the overall community structure, but that it is extremely important to the lifestyles of individual fish species.
Commenting on the recent research publication, Betsy Keath, SFI Programme Officer for UREKA said: “CoBiD and the other UREKA sites are outstanding real-science environments that convey the hands-on excitement of research, the potential for future career opportunities in science and engineering disciplines, and the network of student-faculty collaboration that makes this an initiative with high global impact”
UCD hosts three of the prestigious UREKA site awards. CoBiD-UREKA was the first site established at UCD and is run as part of UCD’s joint programme with Dublin’s Natural History Museum. CoBiD-UREKA projects for 2007 are now available and undergraduate students are encouraged to apply.
For more information, see http://www.ucd.ie/ureka or email ureka@ucd.ie
