Email carolyn.burns@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Publications:
Professor Burns's publications are available here
Teaching:
- Freshwater ecology, particularly lakes (limnology)
Research Interests:
- Effects of climate change and human impacts on the biodiversity, processes, conservation and management of lakes and wetlands.
- Biological processes in lakes, particularly trophic interactions.
- Microbial food webs.
- Plankton ecology.
Please contact me if you are interested in research projects in any of these areas.
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Structure and function of microbial food webs in lakes and wetlands, particularly their role:
a) in carbon transfer up the food chain
b) as early warning indicators of eutrophication and pollution
c) nutrient recycling
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Biological interactions in lakes with particular reference to:
a) population dynamics and production of zooplankton
b) zooplankton distribution (patchiness)
c) the role of competition, predation and parasitism in structuring zooplankton communities in New Zealand ecosystems
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Size-selective processes in aquatic ecosystems, particularly the effects of particle size and concentration on:
a) selection and retention efficiency by grazers
b) capture by predators.
The development and testing of models related to these processes.
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Physiological ecology, behaviour and life history strategies of zooplankton, primarily:
a) the effects of food, temperature and salinity on growth and reproduction
b) resistance to starvation
c) the role of chemical inhibitors from cyanobacteria, predators and competitors (allelopathy) in depressing feeding and reproduction.
Current Projects:
- Pelagic processes in lakes, particularly effects on water quality
- Suspended inorganic sediments and microbial processes
- Behaviour and life history strategies of freshwater crustaceans
- Fatty acid trophic markers in planktonic food webs
- Cyanobacteria-zooplankton interactions
Current Postgraduate Students
- Theresa Downs - (MSc) "Phytoplankton response to trace elements and nutrients in a shallow lake."
Recent Research students
- Lisa Galbraith - (MSc) "Effects of land use on pelagic food webs in a range of Otago wetlands."
- Carolyn Faithfull - (BSc Hons) " The effects of salinity and source of inocula on germination of Anabaqaena flos-aquae akinetes from a New Zealand lake."
- Catherine Hall - (PhD) "Effects of tidal intrusions of seawater on the crustacean zooplankton community of a tidal coastal lake."
- Graeme Haywood - (PhD) "Feeding, growth and population dynamics of the euphausiid, Nyctiphanes australis , in coastal Otago waters."
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