I am an ecological modeller and evolutionary biologist, and my research focuses on understanding human impacts on marine and freshwater ecosystems. I am particularly interested in how global warming and fisheries are affecting size, growth and reproduction of fish and how these changes in fish size in turn change the ecosystems they live in. I am a research fellow at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (University of Tasmania) and a chief researcher at the Nature Research Centre (Lithuania). I am also a 2020 Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation.
RESEARCH THEMES
Physiologically structured ecosystem models for climate change research
Developing and applying size based multispecies models to explore ecological and fisheries consequences of climate change.
Mapping global changes in fish sizes
Using underwater visual data to assess how fish body sizes change through space and time.
Human induced evolution in fish
Modelling, theory and multigenerational experiments to study warming and fishing induced changes in fish life-histories.
Recreational fishing and citizen science
Modelling tools, citizen science and collaboration with industry to assess where and how much people fish.
Fisheries research in a changing world
Understanding how fisheries research tools can incorporate changes in fish and ecosystems due to global warming and other human impacts.
Species diversity & phylogeography
Molecular approaches to explore species diversity and connectivity in post-glacial lakes, Ponto-Caspian region and the deep sea.
PEW FELLOWSHIP
Harnessing big data and citizen science to understand, predict and protect fish size diversity in coastal ecosystems
SUSTAINABLE INLAND FISHERIES
Lithuanian Research Council funded project
ABOUT ME
I completed an MSc in zoology at the University of Vilnius (Lithuania) and a PhD in 2006 in molecular ecology and zoology at the University of Helsinki (Finland). My PhD was focused on the diversity, postglacial dispersal pathways and local adaptations of mysid crustaceans in boreal lakes and Ponto-Caspian region. I was subsequently awarded a David & Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship to work at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (USA) and study connectivity of deep-sea chemosynthetic communities.
In 2009 I joined CSIRO, taking a new research direction using ecosystem models to understand how fisheries-induced evolution might be affecting marine ecosystems. My research demonstrated that species interactions can magnify human impacts, and potentially reverse population resilience predictions made using single species population models. This work has received a lot of public and media attention including Australasian Science, ABC Science Report and an interview for a German DRadio.
In 2013 I was awarded a competitive Kone Foundation (Finland) fellowship for applied sciences, and moved to Finland to study fisheries and climate change effects on the Baltic Sea using marine ecosystem models.
I returned to Australia in 2017 to join IMAS and the Size Ecology research group, continuing my research aimed at developing and applying marine ecosystem models to understand impacts of climate change, species redistributions and fish life-history changes on the function, productivity and resilience of marine ecosystems in Australia and globally.
Since 2019 I am also concurrently a chief researcher at the Nature Research Centre, Lithuania, where I lead a project to apply models, citizen science and new tools for sustainable food production and ecological services of inland aquatic ecosystems.
CONTACT
Institute of Marine & Antarctic Studies
University of Tasmania
20 Castray Esplanade, Battery Point
Tasmania 7004 Australia
Nature Research Centre
Akademijos 2, Vilnius, Lithuania
AFFILIATIONS
Dr Asta Audzijonyte 