Prof. David W. Sims
David Sims at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, 2017
Born
Worthing, West Sussex, UK
Known forResearch on the behaviour of sharks
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsMarine biology
Institutions
Doctoral advisorQuentin Bone
Websitewww.mba.ac.uk/profile-main/51

David William Sims MAE (born 1969) is a British marine biologist known for using satellite tracking to study wild behaviour of sharks and for the Global Shark Movement Project.[1][2] He is Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) in Plymouth, and a Professor of Marine Ecology in the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton at the University of Southampton, U.K.

He works in the field of animal ecology researching movements, behaviour and conservation of sharks. Research has estimated global spatial overlap of sharks and fisheries, climate change impacts on fishes, identified common patterns of behaviour (scaling laws) across phyla and informed conservation of threatened species.[3]

Background

He gained a PhD in animal behaviour in 1994 under the supervision of Quentin Bone FRS at the Marine Biological Association. Between 1994 and 1995 Sims did postdoctoral research on physiology of fish behaviour with Paul L.R. Andrews and J. Z. Young FRS after which he was lecturer in marine biology at the University of Plymouth. Between 1998 and 2000 he was lecturer in the Zoology Department at the University of Aberdeen before becoming a Research Fellow at the Marine Biological Association Laboratory in Plymouth in 2000.[4]

He was made Senior Research Fellow at the Marine Biological Association in 2005, became a professor in 2008, and in 2012 was appointed jointly as professor at the University of Southampton.

Awards

Sims is also a recipient[6] of an advanced grant from the European Research Council.[7]

Research

David Sims is known for research on the behaviour, ecology and conservation of sharks[8] studied using remote tracking technology (telemetry), for studying climate change impacts on fishes, and for making advances in the field of animal movement ecology.[9]

Basking shark conservation

Beginning in 1995 Sims studied the behavioural ecology of the plankton-feeding basking shark, the world's second largest fish.[10] He showed from long-term field studies of behaviour and satellite tracking that basking sharks feed on specific assemblages of zooplankton and do not hibernate in winter,[11][12][13] overturning an understanding which had stood for nearly 50 years.[14] Sims' satellite tracking of basking sharks were some of the first long-term trackings of any shark species[15] and contributed directly to successful conservation proposals to list basking sharks on Appendix II of the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) (Feb 2003)[16][17] and the Convention for the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) (Nov 2005).

Basking sharks were also studied to find out how fish actually respond to variations in zooplankton prey density gradients in the ocean, showing basking sharks were useful as 'biological plankton recorders', results which were published in the journal Nature.[18] Results have demonstrated the biological significance of ocean fronts to predators,[19] which have potential as candidates for high-seas protected areas.[10]

Climate change impacts on fishes

Since 2001, Sims has also made significant contributions[20] to understanding of climate change impacts on fish populations, including how climate-driven warming has altered migration timings,[21][22] dramatic community changes of European marine fish,[23][24] and vertical habitat compression of sharks due to ocean deoxygenation which can increase vulnerability to longline fishing.[25]

Scaling laws of movement

Research has identified common scaling laws that describe movement paths and behaviour patterns of marine predators.[26][27][28][29][30]

It is argued that Sims' work has provided the strongest empirical evidence[31][32][33] for the existence of movement patterns that are well approximated by biological Lévy flights and Lévy walks, a special class of random walk that theoretically optimise random searches for sparsely distributed resources.[34] It is said that Sims' work has shifted the debate on biological Lévy walks from whether they exist, to how and why they arise.[32][33] He also conducted the first empirical field tests of the Lévy flight foraging hypothesis.

In the book Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do, the physicist and best-selling author Albert-László Barabási writes: "Yet if a Lévy flight offers the best search strategy, why didn’t natural selection force animals to exploit it? In February 2008 David Sims showed that it did, in fact."

Sims' 2008 Nature paper announcing the discovery of Scaling laws of marine predator search behaviour is a Web of Science Highly Cited Paper. Since then additional evidence for biological Lévy walks has accumulated across a wide range of taxa including microbes and humans[35] and in fossil trails of extinct invertebrates,[36] suggesting an ancient origin of the movement pattern. His work contributes to the emerging understanding[37] in animal movement ecology that normal diffusion is insufficient for describing natural movements such as searching behaviour but that anomalous diffusion is required.

His studies published in Nature on Lévy and Brownian searches in ocean predators[26][27] inspired the optimal-foraging decision process used in an optimisation algorithm – the "Marine Predators Algorithm"[38] – a high-performance optimizer with applications to engineering and medicine, including electrical modeling of photovoltaic power plants,[39] renewable-energy systems design,[40] and COVID-19 x-ray image classification.[41]

Spatial overlap of sharks and fisheries

In 2016 Sims led an international team tracking ocean-wide movements of sharks. They found pelagic sharks like the shortfin mako aggregate in space-use "hotspots" characterized by fronts and high plankton biomass.[42] Data showed longline fishing vessels also targeted the habitats and efficiently tracked shark movements seasonally, leading to an 80% spatial overlap. The work suggests current hotspots are at risk from overfishing and argued for introduction of international catch limits. The results were reported widely in the media including in The Times newspaper[43] and the journal Science.[44]

Global Shark Movement Project

He initiated the Global Shark Movement Project, an international collaboration of research groups across 26 countries. The database assembled contains over 2,000 satellite tracks of sharks and is used "to find out where sharks aggregate, how distributions are influenced by environmental variations, and the global overlap with anthropogenic threats such as fisheries".

In 2019 the team published its first results in Nature reporting a global spatial risk assessment of sharks.[45] They showed nearly one quarter of shark space-use hotspots overlap with longline fisheries each month, rising to over 60% each month for commercially valuable sharks (like shortfin mako) and internationally protected species (like great white shark). Shark hotspots were also associated with significant increases in fishing effort, leading the team to conclude that pelagic sharks have limited spatial refuge from current levels of fishing effort in marine areas beyond national jurisdictions (the high seas). They suggest large-scale marine reserves centred on shark hotspots could help to limit shark exploitation on the high seas. The paper was reported worldwide including by the BBC,[46] CNN[47] and NPR.[48]

It has been commented[49] that the paper has "provided a much-needed blueprint for conservation actions that could be used to provide sharks with safe havens in our increasingly crowded oceans".

Science and media

Sims' research on basking shark behaviour was the subject of an award-winning documentary, "Email from a shark", by the Cornish film company Shark Bay Films, that aired on Sky in December 2004. The film won the British Council Youth and Science Award at the Helsingborg Film Festival, Sweden, in 2004. Sims' research has received media attention, including articles in New Scientist, Science, Science News, Physics World, and in documentaries programmes for BBC Television, such as BBC1 "Animal Camera" with Steve Leonard (10 March 2004), BBC Radio 4 Natural History Programme, Channel 5 "Nick Baker's Weird Creatures" episode 5 – the basking shark (16 February 2007), and BBC Radio 4 Inside Science (25 July 2019) presented by Adam Rutherford.

References

  1. ↑ "Sharks: one in four habitats in remote open ocean threatened by longline fishing" "The Conversation" (24 July 2019)
  2. ↑ Warren, Matthew (2019). "Sharks squeezed out by longline fishing vessels". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-02265-5. PMID 32699363. S2CID 199895594.
  3. ↑ "David W. Sims - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com.
  4. ↑ "Ocean Predator Movement Ecology and Conservation | Marine Biological Association". 16 January 2023. Retrieved 25 January 2023.
  5. ↑ "Prestigious awards honour the stars of conservation science" "Zoological Society of London" (28 October 2020)
  6. ↑ "Marine biologist recognised by European funding for pioneering research" (Marine Biological Association, 13 May 2020
  7. ↑ "ERC Advanced Grants 2019 - European Research Council"
  8. ↑ Hays, Graeme C.; et al. (2019). "Translating Marine Animal Tracking Data into Conservation Policy and Management". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 34 (5): 459–473. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2019.01.009. hdl:10754/653047. PMID 30879872. S2CID 81983038.
  9. ↑ Hays, Graeme C.; et al. (2016). "Key Questions in Marine Megafauna Movement Ecology" (PDF). Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 31 (6): 463–475. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2016.02.015. PMID 26979550.
  10. 1 2 Sims, D. W. (2008). "Sieving a living: A review of the biology, ecology and conservation status of the plankton-feeding basking shark Cetorhinus maximus". Advances in Marine Biology. 54: 171–220. doi:10.1016/S0065-2881(08)00003-5. PMID 18929065.
  11. ↑ w.Sims, D. (1999). "Threshold foraging behaviour of basking sharks on zooplankton: Life on an energetic knife-edge?". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 266 (1427): 1437-1443. doi:10.1098/rspb.1999.0798. PMC 1690094.
  12. ↑ Weihs, Daniel (1999). "No hibernation for basking sharks". Nature. 400 (6746): 717–718. doi:10.1038/23368. S2CID 4423525.
  13. ↑ Sims, D. W.; Southall, E. J.; Richardson, A. J.; Reid, P. C.; Metcalfe, J. D. (2003). "Seasonal movements and behaviour of basking sharks from archival tagging: No evidence of winter hibernation". Marine Ecology Progress Series. 248: 187–196. doi:10.3354/meps248187.
  14. ↑ Matthews, L. Harrison (1962). "The shark that hibernates". New Scientist. 280: 756–759.
  15. ↑ Sequeira, A. M. M.; Heupel, M. R.; Lea, M.‐A.; Eguíluz, V. M.; Duarte, C. M.; Meekan, M. G.; Thums, M.; Calich, H. J.; Carmichael, R. H.; Costa, D. P.; Ferreira, L. C.; Fernandéz‐Gracia, J.; Harcourt, R.; Harrison, A.‐L.; Jonsen, I.; McMahon, C. R.; Sims, D. W.; Wilson, R. P.; Hays, G. C. (2019). "The importance of sample size in marine megafauna tagging studies". Ecological Applications. 29 (6): e01947. doi:10.1002/eap.1947. hdl:10754/656358. PMID 31183944. S2CID 184486488.
  16. ↑ Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs “Morley wins fight to save the basking shark” Defra News Release (15 November 2002)
  17. ↑ Hays, Graeme C.; et al. (2019). "Translating Marine Animal Tracking Data into Conservation Policy and Management". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 34 (5): 459–473. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2019.01.009. hdl:10754/653047. PMID 30879872. S2CID 81983038.
  18. ↑ Sims, David W.; Quayle, Victoria A. (1998). "Selective foraging behaviour of basking sharks on zooplankton in a small-scale front". Nature. 393 (6684): 460–464. doi:10.1038/30959. S2CID 205000936.
  19. ↑ Sims, D. W.; Southall, E. J.; Quayle, V. A.; Fox, A. M. (2000). "Annual social behaviour of basking sharks associated with coastal front areas". Proceedings. Biological Sciences. 267 (1455): 1897–1904. doi:10.1098/rspb.2000.1227. PMC 1690754. PMID 11052542.
  20. ↑ "Prestigious awards honour the stars of conservation science". Zoological Society of London. 28 October 2020.
  21. ↑ Sims, David W.; Genner, Martin J.; Southward, Alan J.; Hawkins, Stephen J. (2001). "Timing of squid migration reflects North Atlantic climate variability". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. 268 (1485): 2607–2611. doi:10.1098/rspb.2001.1847. PMC 1088923. PMID 11749718.
  22. ↑ Sims, David W.; Wearmouth, Victoria J.; Genner, Martin J.; Southward, Alan J.; Hawkins, Stephen J. (2004). "Low-temperature-driven early spawning migration of a temperate marine fish". Journal of Animal Ecology. 73 (2): 333–341. doi:10.1111/j.0021-8790.2004.00810.x.
  23. ↑ Genner, Martin J.; Sims, David W.; Wearmouth, Victoria J.; Southall, Emily J.; Southward, Alan J.; Henderson, Peter A.; Hawkins, Stephen J. (2004). "Regional climatic warming drives long–term community changes of British marine fish". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. 271 (1539): 655–661. doi:10.1098/rspb.2003.2651. PMC 1691641. PMID 15156925.
  24. ↑ Simpson, Stephen D.; Jennings, Simon; Johnson, Mark P.; Blanchard, Julia L.; Schön, Pieter-Jan; Sims, David W.; Genner, Martin J. (2011). "Continental Shelf-Wide Response of a Fish Assemblage to Rapid Warming of the Sea". Current Biology. 21 (18): 1565–1570. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.08.016. PMID 21924906. S2CID 1409843.
  25. ↑ Vedor, Marisa; Queiroz, Nuno; Mucientes, Gonzalo; Couto, Ana; Costa, Ivo da; Santos, António dos; Vandeperre, Frederic; Fontes, Jorge; Afonso, Pedro; Rosa, Rui; Humphries, Nicolas E.; Sims, David W. (2021). "Climate-driven deoxygenation elevates fishing vulnerability for the ocean's widest ranging shark". eLife. 10. doi:10.7554/eLife.62508. PMC 7815312. PMID 33461659. S2CID 231641447.
  26. 1 2 Sims, David W.; Southall, Emily J.; Humphries, Nicolas E.; Hays, Graeme C.; Bradshaw, Corey J. A.; Pitchford, Jonathan W.; James, Alex; Ahmed, Mohammed Z.; Brierley, Andrew S.; Hindell, Mark A.; Morritt, David; Musyl, Michael K.; Righton, David; Shepard, Emily L. C.; Wearmouth, Victoria J.; Wilson, Rory P.; Witt, Matthew J.; Metcalfe, Julian D. (2008). "Scaling laws of marine predator search behaviour". Nature. 451 (7182): 1098–1102. doi:10.1038/nature06518. PMID 18305542. S2CID 4412923.
  27. 1 2 Humphries, Nicolas E.; Queiroz, Nuno; Dyer, Jennifer R. M.; Pade, Nicolas G.; Musyl, Michael K.; Schaefer, Kurt M.; Fuller, Daniel W.; Brunnschweiler, Juerg M.; Doyle, Thomas K.; Houghton, Jonathan D. R.; Hays, Graeme C.; Jones, Catherine S.; Noble, Leslie R.; Wearmouth, Victoria J.; Southall, Emily J.; Sims, David W. (2010). "Environmental context explains Lévy and Brownian movement patterns of marine predators". Nature. 465 (7301): 1066–1069. doi:10.1038/nature09116. PMID 20531470. S2CID 4316766.
  28. ↑ Humphries, Nicolas E.; Weimerskirch, Henri; Queiroz, Nuno; Southall, Emily J.; Sims, David W. (2012). "Foraging success of biological Lévy flights recorded in situ". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (19): 7169–7174. doi:10.1073/pnas.1121201109. PMC 3358854. PMID 22529349.
  29. ↑ Hays, G. C.; Bastian, T.; Doyle, T. K.; Fossette, S.; Gleiss, A. C.; Gravenor, M. B.; Hobson, V. J.; Humphries, N. E.; Lilley, M. K.; Pade, N. G.; Sims, D. W. (2012). "High activity and Levy searches: Jellyfish can search the water column like fish". Proceedings. Biological Sciences. 279 (1728): 465–473. doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.0978. PMC 3234559. PMID 21752825.
  30. ↑ Wearmouth, Victoria J.; McHugh, Matthew J.; Humphries, Nicolas E.; Naegelen, Aurore; Ahmed, Mohammed Z.; Southall, Emily J.; Reynolds, Andrew M.; Sims, David W. (2014). "Scaling laws of ambush predator 'waiting' behaviour are tuned to a common ecology". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 281 (1782). doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.2997. PMC 3973260. PMID 24619440.
  31. ↑ Barabási,Albert-László (2010). "Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do". New York: Dutton.
  32. 1 2 Buchanan, Mark (2008). "Ecological modelling: The mathematical mirror to animal nature". Nature. 453 (7196): 714–716. doi:10.1038/453714a. PMID 18528368. S2CID 4341313.
  33. 1 2 Viswanathan, Gandhimohan M.; da Luz, Marcos G. E.; Raposo, Ernesto P.; Stanley, H. Eugene (June 2011). The Physics of Foraging: An Introduction to Random Searches and Biological Encounters. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107006799.
  34. ↑ Viswanathan, G. M.; Buldyrev, Sergey V.; Havlin, Shlomo; Da Luz, M. G. E.; Raposo, E. P.; Stanley, H. Eugene (1999). "Optimizing the success of random searches". Nature. 401 (6756): 911–914. doi:10.1038/44831. PMID 10553906. S2CID 4419834.
  35. ↑ Raichlen, David A.; Wood, Brian M.; Gordon, Adam D.; Mabulla, Audax Z. P.; Marlowe, Frank W.; Pontzer, Herman (2014). "Evidence of Lévy walk foraging patterns in human hunter–gatherers". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (2): 728–733. doi:10.1073/pnas.1318616111. PMC 3896191. PMID 24367098.
  36. ↑ Sims, David W.; Reynolds, Andrew M.; Humphries, Nicolas E.; Southall, Emily J.; Wearmouth, Victoria J.; Metcalfe, Brett; Twitchett, Richard J. (2014). "Hierarchical random walks in trace fossils and the origin of optimal search behavior". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (30): 11073–11078. doi:10.1073/pnas.1405966111. PMC 4121825. PMID 25024221.
  37. ↑ Bartumeus, Frederic; Campos, Daniel; Ryu, William S.; Lloret-Cabot, Roger; Méndez, Vicenç; Catalan, Jordi (2016). "Foraging success under uncertainty: Search tradeoffs and optimal space use". Ecology Letters. 19 (11): 1299–1313. doi:10.1111/ele.12660. hdl:10261/137171. PMID 27634051.
  38. ↑ Faramarzi, Afshin; Heidarinejad, Mohammad; Mirjalili, Seyedali; Gandomi, Amir H. (2020). "Marine Predators Algorithm: A nature-inspired metaheuristic". Expert Systems with Applications. 152: 113377. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2020.113377. hdl:10453/146522. S2CID 215941043.
  39. ↑ Soliman, Mahmoud A.; Hasanien, Hany M.; Alkuhayli, Abdulaziz (2020). "Marine Predators Algorithm for Parameters Identification of Triple-Diode Photovoltaic Models". IEEE Access. 8: 155832–155842. doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3019244. S2CID 221473459.
  40. ↑ Wang, Zixin; Wang, Qiang; Zhang, Zhi; Razmjooy, Navid (2021). "A new configuration of autonomous <SCP>CHP</SCP> system based on improved version of marine predators algorithm: A case study". International Transactions on Electrical Energy Systems. 31 (4). doi:10.1002/2050-7038.12806. S2CID 234020255.
  41. ↑ Sahlol, Ahmed T.; Yousri, Dalia; Ewees, Ahmed A.; Al-Qaness, Mohammed A. A.; Damasevicius, Robertas; Elaziz, Mohamed Abd (2020). "COVID-19 image classification using deep features and fractional-order marine predators algorithm". Scientific Reports. 10 (1): 15364. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-71294-2. PMC 7506559. PMID 32958781. S2CID 221844054.
  42. ↑ Queiroz, Nuno; Humphries, Nicolas E.; Mucientes, Gonzalo; Hammerschlag, Neil; Lima, Fernando P.; Scales, Kylie L.; Miller, Peter I.; Sousa, Lara L.; Seabra, Rui; Sims, David W. (2016). "Ocean-wide tracking of pelagic sharks reveals extent of overlap with longline fishing hotspots". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (6): 1582–1587. doi:10.1073/pnas.1510090113. PMC 4760806. PMID 26811467.
  43. ↑ Webster, Ben (24 July 2023). "Sharks being wiped out by sat nav". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460.
  44. ↑ Stokstad, Erik (25 January 2016). "How vulnerable are sharks to commercial fishing?". Science. doi:10.1126/article.2185073 (inactive 1 August 2023).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2023 (link)
  45. ↑ Queiroz, Nuno; et al. (2019). "Global spatial risk assessment of sharks under the footprint of fisheries". Nature. 572 (7770): 461–466. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1444-4. hdl:10072/397542. PMID 31340216. S2CID 198494465.
  46. ↑ "Science in Action" (BBC World Service, 25 July 2019)
  47. ↑ "Why choosing fish for dinner may be killing sharks" by Ashley Strickland (CNN, 30 July 2019)
  48. ↑ "Sharks Have Few Places To Hide From Fishing" (National Public Radio, Inc. US, 25 July 2019)
  49. ↑ Baum, Julia K. (2019). "Industrial fishing boats leave few safe havens for sharks on the high seas". Nature. 572 (7770): 449–450. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-02357-2. PMID 31427796. S2CID 201065053.
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