| Prof. David Sims | |
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David Sims at the Marine Biological Association in October 2008
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| Born | 7 June 1969 Worthing, West Sussex, UK |
| Residence | Plymouth |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | Fish behavioural ecology |
| Notable awards | FSBI Medal |
David Sims (b. 7 June 1969) is an English biological scientist who is a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director for Research at the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) in Plymouth.
He works in the field of behavioural ecology and is known for his research on foraging of free-ranging predators, studied using a combination of techniques including miniature electronic animal-attached tracking devices, movement analysis using methods transferred from statistical physics, and computer models of search efficiency. His work cuts across fields spanning animal behaviour to applied physics.
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He has been awarded a ‘Scientist of the New Century’ Lecture from the Royal Institution of Great Britain (2001), honorary Life Membership of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (2001), the FSBI Medal from the Fisheries Society of the British Isles (2007), and the Stanley Gray Silver Medal from the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, IMarEST (2008).
He attained a First Class Honours degree in Biological Sciences (1991) and a Ph.D in animal behaviour (1994) from the University of Plymouth, UK. His Ph.D research on fish behaviour was undertaken in part at the MBA Laboratory under the supervision of Dr Quentin Bone FRS, whilst in receipt of a personal studentship from the Natural Environment Research Council[1]. He was a lecturer in the Zoology Department at the University of Aberdeen before taking up a NERC-funded Fellowship at the Marine Biological Association Laboratory in Plymouth in 2000 [1].
David Sims is known for his discovery of Lévy scaling laws of search behaviour patterns across diverse predator species (reptiles, sharks, bony fish, penguins) and that these patterns occur in habitats with sparse prey, as predicted by theory. [2] [3]
This work has provided perhaps the strongest empirical evidence [4] [5] [6] for the existence of biological Lévy flights, a specialised random search pattern that was theorised to be a new principle in ecology in 1999. [7] It is said that Sims’ work has shifted the debate on biological Lévy flights from whether they exist, to how and why they arise. [4] [6]. His work also represents the first test of the Lévy flight foraging hypothesis, which states that since Lévy flights can optimise random searches [8], search patterns must have naturally evolved in organisms to exploit Lévy flights. This presents the possibility that searching movements approximated by Lévy patterns have evolved in diverse organisms, from microbes to humans. [9] [10] [11]
Other findings include the first measurements of how predatory fish actually respond to variations in prey density gradients in the ocean [12], empirical data that has informed search algorithms [13], and the biological significance of ocean fronts to predators [14] [15], which have potential as candidates for high seas marine protected areas (MPAs) [16].
Sims and colleagues also demonstrated how timings of migrations of commercially important fish and squid vary in response to rapid climate-driven changes in sea temperature that have occurred over the past few decades [17] [18] They found phenological changes in migration shifted by up to two months in years with the greatest temperature changes, variations which have consequences for fisheries and their management.
Sims is also known for his long-term study of the behavioural ecology of the plankton-feeding basking shark, the world’s second largest fish [16] . He showed from natural experiments and theoretical calculations, and then tested predictions directly using satellite tracking, that basking sharks do not hibernate in winter [19] [20] [21], overturning an understanding which had stood for nearly 50 years [22].
His research group has also documented geographical sexual segregation of sharks, and identified that this behavioural trait can interact with spatially focussed longlining fisheries to increase the risk of population decline in these vulnerable species [23]. They have also been involved with several technological advances, such as the first use of GPS tags to track large fish in the ocean [24] [25].
David Sims’ research has been published in leading scientific journals including Nature [3] and Proceedings of the Royal Society B[26]. It has also received media attention, including articles in New Scientist, Nature, Science, Science News, Physics World, and in documentaries and films such as “Email From A Shark”, which won the British Council Youth and Science Award at the Helsingborg Film Festival, Sweden, in 2004. Professor Sims has featured in several wildlife documentary programmes for BBC Television, such as BBC1 “Animal Camera” with Steve Leonard (10th March 2004), BBC Radio 4 Natural History Programme, and Channel 5 “Nick Baker's Weird Creatures” episode 5 – the basking shark (16th Feb 2007).