Pete Jumars strives to identify quantitative physical, chemical and geological constraints that can be measured or calculated in order to bound the rates of processes in which marine organisms participate.
Our group concentrates on the interface between individual organisms and physical, chemical and geological processes. Our interests extend to populations, communities and ecosystems, but we are unabashedly reductionist and focused on mechanism. Current projects include effects of unsteady flows at low Reynolds numbers on phytoplankton (joint with Lee Karp-Boss), interactions between burrowing and digestion in deposit feeders with physical and chemical properties of sediments (joint with Larry Mayer), and effects of organisms and their structures on propagation of sound in and near the seabed (with the idea of using sound to infer abundances, activity levels and behaviors).