Dr Jonathan Grey
Senior Lecturer

Room: 1.03, Fogg building
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 5688
Email: j.grey("at" sign)qmul.ac.uk

Research interests:

Research website: http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/jgrey/index.html

Alternative resources fuelling aquatic food webs, the effects of invasive species, hind-casting, and cross ecosystem boundary linkages

I use a range of techniques but principally stable isotope analyses to characterise food webs, trophic interactions, and ecological plasticity in aquatic ecosystems. My research group has revealed that considerable production in lake ecosystems actually stems from chemosynthetic rather than photosynthetic sources and that this can be traced throughout the aquatic food web and exported to terrestrial predators. We are now studying similar use of alternative basal resources in highly productive lotic ecosystems. We also use stable isotopes to study the effects of invasive taxa such as crayfish and fish on the native community structure and ecosystem processes, as well as how waves of invaders interact with each other or in response to climate change.Much of my research attempts to break down the long perceived barriers between aquatic and terrestrial systems, and investigates cross ecosystem-boundary transfer of energy. I am beginning a new avenue of research on saline lakes and how the production from such ecosystems may be an extremely important subsidy to terrestrial environments.