Name: Simon Jennings

Current Post: Honorary Professor of Environmental Sciences

Room Number: 01.22

Telephone: 01603 593398 (alt. 01502 524363)

Fax: 01603 591327 (alt. 01502 513865)

Email: simon.jennings@uea.ac.uk (alt. Simon.Jennings@cefas.co.uk)  
 

Research Interests

Food webs; life histories, community and ecosystem ecology; fisheries ecology, environmental management systems and policy.

 

Biography

My current roles are Lead Scientist for the Environment and Ecosystems Division at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft, UK and Chair of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. I work at UEA for 1 day each week to develop and facilitate research collaborations between UEA and Cefas.

With colleagues, I conduct research (i) to describe and predict the structure and function of populations, communities and ecosystems, (ii) to measure and predict human and environmental impacts on structure and function and to assess the sustainability of impacts and (iii) to develop and apply tools to support environmental management. Outputs of our research have often contributed to policy development.

We strive to conduct research that spans the continuum from the fundamental to the applied, to ensure that ‘good’ ideas are tested, progressed and applied in environmental management. For example, theoretical work on the structure and function of marine food webs has contributed to the development of environmental indicators and baselines for assessing human impacts- that are now being used to support an ecosystem approach to management.

Through CEFAS, I advise national and international bodies on marine conservation, biodiversity, environmental management and fisheries issues.

 

Some Recent Papers

Blanchard, J.L., Jennings, S., Law, R., Castle, M.D., McCloghrie, P., Rochet, M.-J., & Benoit, E. (2009) How does abundance scale with body size in coupled size-structured food webs. Journal of Animal Ecology, 78, 270-280. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01466.x

Jennings, S. & Wilson, R.W. (2009) Fishing impacts on the marine inorganic carbon cycle. Journal of Applied Ecology, 46, 976–982. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2009.01682.x

Wilson, R.W., Millero, F.J., Taylor, J.R., Walsh, P.J., Christensen, V., Jennings, S., & Grosell, M. (2009) Contribution of fish to the marine inorganic carbon cycle. Science, 323, 359-362. doi: 10.1126/science.1157972

Barnes, C., Jennings, S., & Barry, J.T. (2009) Environmental correlates of large-scale spatial variation in the δ¹³C of marine animals. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 81, 368-374. doi: 10.1016/j.ecss.2008.11.011

Jennings, S. (2009) The role of marine protected areas in marine environmental management. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66, 16-21. doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsn163
Pope, J.G., Falk-Pedersen, J., Jennings, S., Rice, J.C., Gislason, H., & Daan, N. (2009) Honey, I cooled the cods: modelling the effects of temperature on the structure of Boreal/ Arctic fish ecosystems. Deep-Sea Research Part II , 56, 2097–210.7 doi: 10.1016/j.dsr2.2008.11.021

Worm, B., Hilborn, R., Baum, J.K., Branch, T.A., Collie, J.S., Costello, C., Fogarty, M.J., Fulton, E.A., Hutchings, J.A., Jennings, S., Jensen, O.P., Lotze, H.K., Mace, P.M., McClanahan, T., Minto, C., Palumbi, S.R., Parma, A.M., Ricard, D., Rosenburg, A.A., Watson, R., & Zeller, D. (2009) Rebuilding global fisheries. Science, 325, 578-585. doi: 10.1126/science.1173146

Jennings, S., Melin, F., Blanchard, J.L., Forster, R.M., Dulvy, N.K., & Wilson, R.W. (2008) Global-scale predictions of community and ecosystem properties from simple ecological theory. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 275, 1375-1383. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2008.0192

Jennings, S., Barnes, C., Sweeting, C.J., & Polunin, N.V.C. (2008) Application of nitrogen stable isotope analysis in size-based marine food web and macroecological research. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 22, 1673-1680. doi: 10.1002/rcm.3497

Blanchard, J.L., Maxwell, D.L., & Jennings, S. (2008) Power of monitoring surveys to detect abundance trends in depleted fish populations: the effects of density dependent habitat use, patchiness and climate change. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65, 111-120. doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsm182

Barnes, C. & Jennings, S. (2007) Effect of temperature, ration, body size and age on sulphur isotope fractionation in fish. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 21, 1461-1467. doi: 10.1002/rcm.2982

Barnes, C., Sweeting, C.J., Jennings, S., Barry, J.T., & Polunin, N.V.C. (2007) Effect of temperature and ration size on carbon and nitrogen stable isotope fractionation. Functional Ecology, 21, 356-362. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2435.2006.01224.x

Hiddink, J.G., Jennings, S., & Kaiser, M.J. (2007) Assessing and predicting the relative ecological impacts costs of disturbance onto habitats with different sensitivities. Journal of Applied Ecology, 44, 405-413 doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2007.01274.x

Jennings, S., d'Oliveira, J.A.A., & Warr, K.J. (2007) Measurement of body size and abundance in tests of macroecological and food web theory. Journal of Animal Ecology, 76, 72-82. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2006.01180.x

Newton, K., Côté, I.M., Pilling, G.M., Jennings, S., & Dulvy, N.K. (2007) Current and future sustainability of island coral reef fisheries. Current Biology, 17, 655-658 doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.02.054

Graham, N.A.J., Wilson, S.K., Jennings, S., Polunin, N.V.C., Bijoux, J.P., & Robinson, J. (2006) Dynamic fragility of oceanic coral reef ecosystems. Proceedings US National Academy of Sciences, 103, 8425-8429. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0600693103

Books

Kaiser M.J., Attrill M.J., Jennings, S., Thomas D.N., Barnes D.K.A., Brierley A.S., Polunin N.V.C., Raffaelli D.G. & Williams P.J. Le B. (2005). Marine Ecology: Processes, Systems and Impacts. Oxford University Press.

Jennings S., Kaiser M.J. & Reynolds J.D. (2001). Marine Fisheries Ecology. Blackwell Science.

Moore, P.G. & Jennings, S. (2000) (eds). Commercial fishing: the wider ecological impacts. Blackwell Science.

Click here for full list of peer reviewed publications since 2000