Abby Gilson

Introduction

Abby graduated in 2015 with a Masters of Science (MSci) degree from Bangor University, Wales. Abby is a keen phycologist, with a background in rocky shore ecology and species interactions. She is interested in monitoring and empirically testing potential climate-change impacts, particularly in kelp bed and kelp forest systems. Abby enjoys public outreach, educating both locals and tourists in coastal areas about the biodiversity in the habitats found on their shores. Abby comes from a family of fishermen and has spent many summers as a deck-hand on her father’s boat. She enjoys the outdoors, and has taken full advantage of the hiking and mountains that the Island of Ireland has to offer. Abby is also a lighthouse enthusiast and has taken many road-trips during her PhD to explore the lighthouses dotted around the coastline.

Abby’s PhD examines the dynamics of macrophyte-derived detrital production along the Atlantic coast and identifies and characterises the pathways by which kelp-derived energy enters coastal food webs. An extensive monitoring programme has enabled her to quantify and chacterise production and multiple mechanisms of detrital production for intertidal kelp species, and explore the biotic and abiotic factors that drive and regulate these processes. Abby has used a mixture of field and laboratory based experiment to test for differences in the functioning (secondary productivity and trophic transfer) of kelp dominated systems.

Specifically, she has used the large scale marine mesocosm facility at Portaferry to look at interactions between a range of consumers and both warm and cold water kelps under ambient and manipulated environmental conditions. Field manipulations have also tested empirically for: (i) species-specific degradation rates of common kelp species and their warm-water counterparts, (ii) relative differences in the role of microbes versus detritivores in the degradation process of kelp-derived detritus and (iii) effects of increased diversity in resource subsidy on ecosystem functioning (degradation rates and nutritional and chemical composition). Abby has also conducted long-term beach surveys on both sandy and pebbly shores to investigate how wrack deposition differs in different habitat types on a temporal basis. Abby has now created a carbon budget per M²for intertidal kelp species for exposed and moderately exposes habitats which can be scaled up to the coastline of the Island of Ireland.

The importance of Kelp

Globally, primary production in marine food webs is dominated by phytoplankton, in contrast intertidal and subtidal macrophytes contribute about 45% of total primary production in UK coastal waters. Most of this macrophyte production is from kelp (Laminariales), these are large, brown seaweeds that are distributed globally and form diverse habitats. Kelp beds are characterised by extremely high primary productivity, which in turn supports high secondary production, this high productivity combined with their physical structure means that kelp are regarded as ecosystem engineers creating biodiversity hotspots and supporting many commercially important species. Despite their importance, kelp-derived production is not included explicitly in most marine ecosystem models, and their functional role in ecosystem processes and coastal food webs is poorly understood .

Abby's project aims to understand the role and fate of kelp in near shore ecosystems.

You can follow her over on twitter @Abby_R_Gilson

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