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.

Closs teaches ZOOL 221 Animal Designs for Living, ZOOL 318 Freshwater Ecology, ZOOL 416 Freshwater Ecology, and AQFI 352 Fisheries Ecology. Key publications include editing the book Conservation of Freshwater Fishes (Cambridge University Press) and the highly cited paper Spatial and temporal variation in the structure of an intermittent-stream food web with P.S. Lake in Ecological Monographs (1994). Other notable works feature chapters on climate change effects on freshwater fishes, conservation and management, and artificial propagation of freshwater fishes in the same volume, as well as recent papers on otolith microchemistry for fish movement, non-native fish synchrony, and conservation status of New Zealand freshwater fishes (2023). His research has garnered over 5500 citations on Google Scholar, reflecting substantial influence in freshwater ecology and fish conservation. He serves as a media expert on freshwater ecology, fish, whitebait, lakes, and rivers.