Affiliated Scientists

Dr. Chris Stallings
Office: 850-697-4103
Fax: 850-697-3822
E-mail: stallings@bio.fsu.edu

Ph.D., Oregon State University
M.A., San Francisco State University
B.S., East Carolina University

Curriculum vitae

Current press release and featured paper in the May 2009 issue of PLos One.

RESEARCH AND PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS

My research interests are in population biology and community ecology.  In particular, I am interested in the factors that regulate marine fish populations and structure their communities.  A clear understanding of such factors is important to management and conservation issues of our marine resources.  For example, my previous research in the Caribbean and the Bahamas aimed to elucidate the direct and indirect effects of fishing on predators and their prey.  Using broad-scale observational data, I found shifts in the presence of predatory fishes across a fishing intensity gradient.  With fine-scale field experiments, I found that such shifts can have dramatic effects on the entire fish community through altered ecological interactions among predators and differential predation on prey.  My work on coral-reef fishes indicates that management and conservation efforts would benefit from a holistic approach, such as ecosystem-based management and marine reserves.

At the Florida State University Coastal and Marine Lab, I am continuing to investigate population- and community-level questions on marine fishes. I am especially interested in the population dynamics of gag (Mycteroperca microlepis), an important grouper species to both commercial and recreational fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. Gag are protogynous hermaphrodites (begin life as female and later switch to male) that undergo pronounced ontogenetic shifts in both habitat and diet. Such complex life histories not only lend the gag grouper to interesting ecological questions, but also make it important to understand how different human activities (e.g., fishing, habitat destruction) can affect their populations through the different life stages.

I am currently conducting research both to quantify the effects of inshore trawl fisheries on juvenile gag and to characterize faunal communities of Big Bend seagrass meadows. Follow the links for more information on my research in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Stallings, C.D. 2009. Fishery-independent data reveal negative effect of human population density on Caribbean predatory fish communities. PLoS One 4(5): e5333. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005333. pdf

National Geographic Interview with Chris about the PLoS One paper

Stallings, C.D. 2009. Predator identity and recruitment of coral-reef fishes: an indirect effect of fishing? Marine Ecology Progress Series 383: 251-259. pdf

Stallings, C.D. 2008. Indirect effects of an exploited predator on recruitment of coral-reef fishes. Ecology 89: 2090-2095. pdf