Abstract. Ongoing increases in ocean temperatures are posing significant challenges for marine ectotherms as the rates of their biochemical and physiological processes are largely governed by environmental temperature. The majority of studies to date have related changes in metabolic rates and range shifts to increasing temperatures, however few have examined the potential for behavioural thermoregulation to ameliorate the effects of increasing temperatures. The objective of this project is to investigate the potential for tropical fishes to use small-scale movements to regulate body temperature (i.e., behavioural thermoregulation), and how the variability of a species’ thermal environment influences the propensity to move.

Biography. Tiffany completed her BSc in Marine Biology from the University of West Florida while spending the summers in Wakatobi, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia assisting research on how crab-eating frogs and mudskipper fishes tolerate water loss. Furthermore, she assisted in estimating metabolic rates in sea snakes. She earned her MSc here at JCU, and her research investigated how/why fish utilize microhabitats with fluctuating water quality in coral reefs and mangrove ecosystems. She started her PhD in January 2016 expanding upon her interests in microhabitat use. She is supervised by Drs. Jodie Rummer, Andrew Hoey, and Jacob Johansen.