Rate My Professor Gerard Closs

Professor Gerard Closs is a Professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago, within the Division of Sciences. He earned his PhD and served as a PhD student and Teaching Fellow at Monash University from 1986 to 1991 before joining Otago. Previously Head of the Department of Zoology, he specializes in freshwater ecology. His research interests encompass life history evolution and adaptation in freshwater fish, impacts of introduced fish species, ecology of native freshwater fish, movement and activity in freshwater fish, habitat selection, food webs in lakes and streams, and analysis of otolith microstructure and chemistry to track migration. Current projects include the ecology of small estuaries, population dynamics of migratory and resident brown trout, habitat use and behaviour of native fish species in South Island coastal streams, early life history of Indo-Pacific freshwater fishes, recruitment dynamics of diadromous freshwater fish, and life history evolution of freshwater fish. He has supervised over 30 PhD students on topics such as recruitment and migration of brown trout, rehabilitating fishery values in agricultural streams, ecology of fishes in Otago estuaries, life history evolution in galaxiid fishes, and effects of macrophyte control on fish communities.