Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay from the space.

 

From NASA Visible Earth. Credit: NASA/GSFC/JPL, MISR Science Team

Diego A. Narváez

Graduate Student

Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography

Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Science

Old Dominion University

My Ph.D research consists in the study of connectivity among Oysters populations at Delaware Bay. Because of the complex physical and biological processes involved in population connectivity, I'm coupling a series of previously developed numerical models to simulate some processes such as larval transport, larval behavior and population dynamics. A circulation model (ROMS) coupled with a larval behavior model will allow to estimate the dispersal kernels of the Oysters larvae released to the water column. The population dynamics is being addressed with and individual based model that simulates the genetic structure of the population. This genetic model allows to track marked genes among the populations, thus one of the specific goals of this research is to determine the influence of climate change in the transference of the oyster disease resistant gene.

Others research interest:

Larval transport of marine invertebrates, wind and buoyancy-driven flow in estuaries and coastal systems.