Rooker, Jay individual record
Professor
overview

My research centers on the community and population ecology of aquatic organisms, with a special emphasis on marine fishes. I am particularly interested in linkages between habitat selection, individual responses, and survival. My work is both laboratory and field-based, and I typically use both quantitative and experimental approaches to elucidate the importance of biotic and abiotic factors that influence growth, condition, and survival. In addition, we are currently using a variety of natural markers to solve ecological problems. Otolith chemistry is being used to retrospectively determine the environmental histories of marine fishes. The premise of otolith chemistry is that certain elements or isotopes are incorporated into otoliths in proportion to their concentrations in the environment, and thus we use these elemental fingerprints to distinguish individuals from different environments or regions. We also use dietary tracers (stable isotopes, fatty acids) to investigate marine food web structure since consumer tissues reflect the isotopic and fatty acid composition of prey in a predictable manor. These natural biomarkers provide time-integrated or long-term measures of diet, and both approaches afford information on source(s) of organic matter supporting local food webs as well as trophic relationships of associated consumers. Recent work also involves the use of sophisticated electronic tags to investigate movement and population connectivity of coastal and pelagic fishes.

selected publications
Academic Articles97
  • Rooker, J. R., Sluis, M. Z., Kitchens, L. L., Dance, M. A., Falterman, B., Lee, J. M., ... David Wells, R. J. (2023). Nursery origin of yellowfin tuna in the western Atlantic Ocean: significance of Caribbean Sea and trans-Atlantic migrants.. Scientific Reports. 13(1), 16277.
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  • Gough, B., Prouse, A., Dance, M. A., Wells, R., & Rooker, J. R. (2023). Regional Variation in the Trophic Ecology of Wahoo (Acanthocybium solandri) in the Western Atlantic Ocean. 8(10), 519-519.
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  • David Wells, R. J., Rooker, J. R., Addis, P., Arrizabalaga, H., Baptista, M., Bearzi, G., ... Villanueva, R. (2021). Regional patterns of δ 13 C and δ 15 N for European common cuttlefish ( Sepia officinalis ) throughout the Northeast Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Royal Society Open Science. 8(9), 210345-210345.
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  • Rooker, J. R., Wells, R., Block, B. A., Liu, H., Baumann, H., Chiang, W., ... Shiao, J. (2021). Natal origin and age-specific egress of Pacific bluefin tuna from coastal nurseries revealed with geochemical markers.. Scientific Reports. 11(1), 14216.
  • Plumlee, J. D., Dance, K. M., Dance, M. A., Rooker, J. R., TinHan, T. C., Shipley, J. B., & Wells, R. (2020). Fish assemblages associated with artificial reefs assessed using multiple gear types in the northwest Gulf of Mexico. Bulletin of Marine Science. 96(4), 655-677.
Conference Papers9
  • Mamoozadeh, N. R., McDowell, J. R., Rooker, J. R., & Graves, J. E. (2018). Genetic evaluation of population structure in white marlin (Kajikia albida): the importance of statistical power. ICES Journal of Marine Science: journal du conseil. 75(2), 892-902.
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  • Aschenbrenner, A., Ferreira, B. P., & Rooker, J. R. (2016). Spatial and temporal variability in the otolith chemistry of the Brazilian snapper Lutjanus alexandrei from estuarine and coastal environments.. Journal of Fish Biology. 89(1), 753-769.
  • Baumann, H., Wells, R., Rooker, J. R., Zhang, S., Baumann, Z., Madigan, D. J., ... Fisher, N. S. (2015). Combining otolith microstructure and trace elemental analyses to infer the arrival of juvenile Pacific bluefin tuna in the California current ecosystem. ICES Journal of Marine Science: journal du conseil. 72(7), 2128-2138.
  • Wells, R., Kinney, M. J., Kohin, S., Dewar, H., Rooker, J. R., & Snodgrass, O. E. (2015). Natural tracers reveal population structure of albacore (Thunnus alalunga) in the eastern North Pacific. ICES Journal of Marine Science: journal du conseil. 72(7), 2118-2127.
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  • Geary, B. W., Mikulas, J., Rooker, J. R., Landry, A., & Dellapenna, T. M. (2007). Patterns of habitat use by newly settled red snapper in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. American Fisheries Society Symposium. 60, 25-+.
chaired theses and dissertations
First Name
Jay
Last Name
Rooker