Gary Sprules

Research

Freshwater Ecology

Professor Sprules and his students study various aspects of the structure and dynamics of aquatic food webs. Current interests center on how wind-induced movements of water masses in lakes affect trophic interactions among entrained plankton species, and the possibility that zooplankton in lakes can survive only if their prey occur in patches. Student projects include a) using drifters to track the wind-induced movement of water masses at different depths in lakes while simultaneously sampling zooplankton to test conjectures about depth-specific physical dispersal of plankton (Lauren Barth, MSc; Alex Surugiu, BSc), and b) building energy usage budgets of Daphnia under various conditions and spatial configurations of algal prey to test the hypothesis that these organisms can only meet their ration if algae occur in patches (Audrey Reid, PhD).