Dr Andrew Hirst
Senior Lecturer
- Room: 1.26, Fogg building
- Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 6973
- Email: a.g.hirst("at" sign)qmul.ac.uk
Research interests:
Research website: http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/aghirst/
To date much of my scientific effort has addressed the marine pelagic ecosystem, not simply because this environment has such a profound impact on humankind and the biosphere, but because this system provides fundamental insight into biological questions. I have worked to improve how we quantify and track the role of zooplankton and its change, but also to answer broader science questions, using marine plankton and nekton as the best available models / taxa to test hypotheses. My abiding interest is in rule-based and comparative perspectives, from whole organism physiology, demography and life-cycle, through to ecosystem and food web structure and function.
I have experience in a range of issues: taxonomic re-description (Hirst & Castro-Longoria 1998), correcting physiological methods and their conceptual improvements (Hirst & McKinnon 2001; Hirst et al. 2005; Kimmerer et al. 2007), study of long-term ecosystem change (Hirst & Batten 1998), and global analyses of vital rates and life-history processes, for example addressing body mass scaling and temperature effects (Hirst & Bunker 2003; Hirst & Kiørboe 2002; Hirst & Lopez-Urrutia 2006; Atkinson & Hirst 2007). More recently I have been building upon my organism-based work to develop wider appreciations of the structure and dynamics of marine ecosystems. I have several PhD students who I am working with on these issues.
Dr Hirst is an Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Ocean Life, Danish Technical University, Copenhagen.
Research group
Postgraduate supervision:
Forster, Jack; j.forster ("at" sign) qmul.ac.uk;