Dr. David S. Wethey  
Principal Investigator
Associate Professor Dept. Biological Sciences & Marine Science Program
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC  29208
wethey@biol.cs.edu
http://www.biol.sc.edu/faculty/wethey.html
http://tbone.biol.sc.edu

• BA (Biology) - Yale College 1973
• MS (Zoology) - University of Michigan 1976
• PhD (Biology) - University of Michigan 1979
• NSF Postdoc - University College of North Wales & University of Leeds 1979-80
  
• Assistant Professor - University of South Carolina 1980-86
• Associate Professor - University of South Carolina 1986-present
  
  

  Dr. Wethey's research includes the ecology of barnacles in the rocky intertidal zone, biophysical ecology in the intertidal and subtidal (heat, mass, and momentum transfer), predator-prey relations, conservation genetics of fish populations, and mathematical modeling of population dynamics. His interest in coral reef ecology began as a graduate student in the mid 1970s when he worked on photosynthesis and respiration in reef corals, including a NOAA saturation habitat mission at Hydrolab (the precursor of Aquarius) in Grand Bahama in 1974, and research at Discovery Bay in Jamaica, the Dry Tortugas in Florida, and Enewetak Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean. For those projects, he designed and built underwater instrumentation such as continuous-recording submersible respirometers for determining oxygen production and consumption of corals over 24 hour periods at depths of 60 feet. This required him to learn SCUBA, recompression chamber operation, electronics, machine tools (lathes and milling machines), and computer programming. Since then, he has deployed video cameras in the surf zone in the rocky intertidal to watch barnacle larval settlement behavior in real time, and has built portable weather stations for measuring micrometeorology of salt marshes and body temperatures of snails and clams. The Aquarius mission merges his interest in coral physiology with his recent work on the physics of mass transfer (advection and diffusion) in estuaries, done in collaboration with Aquarius team members Chris Finelli and Dean Pentcheff. Because he has not been diving since 1976, Dr. Wethey is a "dry investigator" on the mission, doing electronics repair, software support and repair, and other support from the mission communications center.

  Selected Publications

  • Wethey, D. S. and J. W. Porter. 1976. Sun and shade differences in productivity of reef corals. Nature 262: 281-282.
  • Wethey, D. S. and J. W. Porter. 1976. Habitat related patterns of productivity of the foliaceous reef coral Pavona praetorta Dana. pp 59-66. In: Coelenterate Ecology and Behavior, G. O. Mackie (ed). Plenum, NY.
  • McCloskey, L. R., D. S. Wethey and J. W. Porter. 1978. Measurement and interpretation of photosynthesis and respiration in reef corals. pp. 379-386. In: Coral Reefs: Research Methods, E. R. Stoddart and R. E. Johannes (eds), SCOR-UNESCO Handbook on Oceanographic Methodology, Vol. 5. UNESCO, Paris.
  • Trench, R. K., D. S. Wethey and J. W. Porter. 1981. Observations on the symbiosis with zooxanthellae among the Tridacnidae (Mollusca, Bivalvia). Biological Bulletin 161: 180-198.
  • Wethey, D.S. 1984. Sun and shade mediate competition in the barnacles Chthamalus and Semibalanus: a field experiment. Biological Bulletin 167: 176 185.
  • Zimmer-Faust, R.K., C.M. Finelli, N.D. Pentcheff and D.S. Wethey. 1995. Odor plumes and animal navigation in turbulent water flow: a field study. Biological Bulletin 188: 111-116.
  • Lindsay, S.M., D.S. Wethey and S.A. Woodin. 1996. Modeling interactions of browsing predation, infaunal activity and recruitment in marine sedimentary systems. American Naturalist 148: 684-699.
  • Finelli, C. M., N. D. Pentcheff, R. K. Zimmer-Faust and D. S. Wethey. 1999. Odor transport in turbulent flows: constraints on animal navigation. Limnology and Oceanography 44: 1056-1071.
  • Finelli, C. M., N. D. Pentcheff, R. K. Zimmer-Faust and D. S. Wethey. 2000. Physical constraints on ecological processes: the effects of odor release rate and flow speed on odor mediated foraging in the field. Ecology 81: 784-797.
  • Denny, M. W. and D. S. Wethey. 2000. Physical processes that generate patterns in marine communities. In: Marine Community Ecology , M. D. Bertness, S. D. Gaines & M. E. Hay (eds), Sinauer.