Christopher Griffiths

My work explores the structure, function and composition of food webs. I'm particularly interested in the scaling of ecology and how we can use information gained at the level of the individual to learn about population and community-level dynamics. To this end, I use multi-species ecosystem models (e.g., mizer, LeMans and Ecopath), built on individual-level processes of growth, mortality and consumption, to investigate how food webs might respond to past, present and future change. I also use population models like Stock Synthesis (SS3) for stock assessment, forecasting and advice. 

I'm also very interested in animal movement. My work considers how telemetry data can be used to investigate the behaviour, seasonality and stock structure of marine fish. I actively contribute to ICES working groups (NIPAG, WGEF, WGECO & WGSAM) and see tagging data as a small window into a marine world that it often otherwise unobservable. 

I code in R and Julia. I model things. I love a good graph.

Recently taught on MSc Biodiveristy and Conservation (APS603) at the University of Sheffield

Demonstrated on data analysis in R courses (APS 240 & APS405) at the University of Sheffield 

I have also authored a series of tutorials for coding in Julia which are freely available on my github repo 

I actively collaborate on all things food webs and tagging with the BecksLab at the University of Sheffield, as well as colleagues at the University of Bristol, University of Bangor, Université de Montréal, University of Tasmania, DTU, Cefas, RSPB and CEH

Researcher at the Department of Aquatic Resources, SLU (Jan 2022 - present)

Postdoc in Food Webs, Stability and Climate Change in the School of BioSciences, University of Sheffield (May 2020 - Dec 2021)

Fisheries Scientist, Cefas (Oct 2018 - Apr 2020)

PhD at the University of Sheffield & University of Tasmania (Oct 2014 - Sep 2018)

I have supervised several MSc and MRes students at the University of Sheffield and contributed to PhD projects at Sheffield, Cefas, DTU and SLU. If you have an idea or want to discuss studentship opportunities please do ping me an email, I look forward to hearing from you. 

Wright S, Griffiths CA, Bendall V, Righton D, Hyder K and Hunter E (2024). Seasonal migrations of the European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax L.) in UK and surrounding waters. Movement Ecology, 10.1186/s40462-024-00482-w. 

Johnson TF, Beckerman AP, Childs DZ, Webb T, Evans KL, Griffiths CA, Capdevila P, Clements CF et al (2024). Revealing uncertainty in the status of biodiversity change. Nature, 628, pages 788–794. 

Batsleer J, Griffiths CA, Bleeker K, Johnson G, Cardinale M and Lorance P (2024). Comparisons of landings to scientific advice indicate overshooting within the common TAC for skates and rays in the Northeast Atlantic. ICES Journal of Marine Science, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsae008. 

Griffiths CA, Winker H, Bartolino V, Wennhage H, Orio A and Cardinale M. (2023). Including older fish in fisheries management: A new age‐based indicator and reference point for exploited fish stocks. Fish and Fisheries, 10.1111/faf.12789. 

Mion M, Griffiths CA, Bartolino V, Haase S and others (2022). New perspectives on Eastern Baltic cod movement patterns from historical and contemporary tagging data. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 689, 109-126. 

Simmons BI, Blyth PSA, Blanchard JL, Clegg T, Delmas E, Garnier A, Griffiths CA, Jacob U, Pennekamp F, Petchey OL , Poisot T et al (2021) Refocusing multiple stressor research around the targets and scales of ecological impacts. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5, 1478-1489.

Wright SR, Righton D, Naulaerts J, Schallert RJ, Bendall V, Griffiths CA, Castleton M, David-Gutierrez D, Madigan D, Beard A , Clingham E et al (2021) Fidelity of yellowfin tuna to seamount and island foraging grounds in the central South Atlantic Ocean. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 172, 103513

Wright SR, Righton D, Naulaerts J, Schallert RJ, Griffiths CA, Chapple T, Madigan D, Laptikhovsky V, Bendall V, Hobbs R , Beare D et al (2021) Yellowfin Tuna Behavioural Ecology and Catchability in the South Atlantic: The Right Place at the Right Time (and Depth). Frontiers in Marine Science, 8, 664593

Spence M, Griffiths CA, Waggitt J, Bannister H, Thorpe R, Rossberg A & Lynam C (2021) Sustainable fishing can lead to improvements in marine ecosystem status: an ensemble-model forecast of the North Sea ecosystem. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 680, 207-221

Griffiths CA, Wright SR, Silva JF, Ellis JR, Righton DA & McCully Phillips SR (2020) Horizontal and vertical movements of starry smooth-hound Mustelus asterias in the northeast Atlantic. PLoS ONE, 15(10), e0239480

Spence MA, Bannister HJ, Ball JE, Dolder PJ, Griffiths CA & Thorpe RB (2020) LeMaRns: a length-based multi-species analysis by numerical simulation in R. PLoS ONE, 15(2),  e0227767

Adam T, Griffiths CA, Leos-Barajas V, Meese EN, Lowe CG, Blackwell PG, Righton D & Langrock R (2019) Joint modelling of multi-scale animal movement data using hierarchical hidden Markov models. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 10(9), 1536-1550

Griffiths CA, Patterson TA, Blanchard J, Righton DA, Wright SR, Pitchford JW & Blackwell PG (2018) Scaling marine fish movement behavior from individuals to populations. Ecology and Evolution, 8(14), 7031-7043

Google Scholar - https://scholar.google.se/citations?user=ctGKMk8AAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=1