Dr. Martin T. O’Connell is the Director of the Nekton Research Laboratory (NRL) at UNO’s Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences. His research interests involve studying, managing, and conserving aquatic animals in freshwater, estuarine, and marine habitats. In particular the researchers and graduate students in his lab examine long-term changes in fish assemblages, responses of aquatic communities to natural and anthropogenic disturbances, and ecological needs of organisms threatened by changing global conditions. While the focus of most of his research is southeastern Louisiana, he also works with ecological data and organisms from throughout the nation and the world. Since 2000, the NRL has generated ecological baseline data from Lake Pontchartrain, the Biloxi Marshes, and the Chandeleur Islands. Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues have published numerous manuscripts based on these data and realize the value this information holds for protecting these ecosystems from disasters such as hurricanes, coastal land loss, and oil spills.
Articles
Effects of Hurricane Katrina on freshwater fish assemblages in a small coastal tributary of Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana (with Jeffrey Van Vrancken), Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (2010)
Hurricane Katrina struck southeastern Louisiana on 29 August 2005 and thereby created an opportunity to...
Freshwater fishes of South Carolina by Fred C. Rohde, Rudolf G. Arndt, Jeffrey W. Foltz, and Joseph M. Quattro with photographs by Fred C. Rohde-Book Review, Fisheries (2010)
After the storm: Post-Katrina reflections from AFS members in Louisiana and Mississippi, Fisheries (2008)
Assessment of rarity of the blackmouth shiner Notropis melanostomus (Cyprinidae) based on museum and recent survey data, Southeastern Naturalist (2005)
Accurate knowledge of an organism's distribution is necessary for conserving species with small or isolated...