Soon to be Dr. Bryant had an amazing year with three first author publications bases on her Ph.D. thesis research! Bryant, S.R. and McClain, C.R. 2022. Functional space expansion driven by transitions between advantageous traits across a deep-sea energetic gradient. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B. 289:20221302 Bryant, S.R.. and Read more…
Gearty, W., J. L. Payne, and C. R. McClain. 2018. Energetic tradeoffs control the size distribution of aquatic mammals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, U.S.A. online early. Very excited to have this new paper out with William Gearty and Jonathan Payne at Stanford University examining why marine animals Read more…
So in the roller coaster that is 2016, I am very happy to announce that I have a NSF funded grant. Seth Newsome (U. of New Mexico) and I are continuing my work with deep-sea wood falls. The official title is “The energetic assembly of biological communities: a test with Read more…
Very excited to see the third paper from the multi-year, wood-fall research project now in press. The paper focuses on a well-known macroecological pattern, the abundance-occupancy relationship. Simply, we find that species that are on average more abundant at any given location or more likely to be found at more Read more…
This paper continues to be a social media giant. My coauthors and I cracked the Top 100 Altmetric scores for 2015. Sizing Ocean Giants with a current score of 954 is ranked 72 in the list. I could not be happier about this and true testament to hard work of my Read more…
My 70 page, 40 figure, 200+ reference tome on body of all the largest marine megafauna is out. McClain, C.R., M.A. Balk, M.C. Benfield, T.A. Branch, C. Chen, J. Cosgrove, A. Dove, L.C. Gaskins, R.R. Helm, F.G.E. Hochberg,, F.B. Lee, S.E. McMurray, C. Schanche, S.N. Stone, and A.D. Thaler (2015) Read more…
Craig McClain, Deep Sea News blogger and marine biologist, asked his students to collect size data on ocean giants and tweet at the same time. Here’s why… McClain, a Duke University professor and founder of the blog Deep Sea News, designed a class this past fall that asked his undergraduate students to Read more…
A great project with great collaborators that came together into a great paper*. We go after the question of the processes that actually drive the evolution of mammals on islands. The answer? It’s complicated. From the abstract: The island rule, a pattern of size shifts on islands, is an oft-cited Read more…
NSFW features some choice quotes from me on why Giant Squid’s aren’t larger.
My first lead author paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science! McClain, C.R., A.P. Allen, D.P. Tittensor, and M.A. Rex (2012) The Energetics of Life on the Deep Seafloor.Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, U.S.A. online early With frigid temperatures and virtually no in situ productivity, the deep oceans, Earth’s Read more…