From National Geographic’s Open Explorer
by Katrina Munsterman, incoming University of Michigan Ph.D. student in ecology and evolutionary biology, Jake Allgeier lab
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| Building an artificial reef in the Bahamas. |
Last December, Jake Allgeier and lab technician, Mona Andskog, built new artificial reefs in the Bahamas. Less than six months later, the reefs are already teeming with life – including aggregating large fishes and benthic invertebrates. Not only is the Allgeier lab testing new AR designs in the water, they are also using computer programming to run agent-based models to understand how changes in fish behavior and movement impact nutrient dynamics and primary production on reefs. This recent modeling work was developed by University of Michigan master’s student, Kenzo Esquivel. Outputs from simulation models in addition to data collected from ARs in the Bahamas will aid in designing the productive reef network in Ile-a-Vache, Haiti.