Dr. Luis A. Hückstädt
I am a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter in Cornwall (England).
My research is motivated by my interest in understanding the role that large predators, particularly marine mammals, play in marine ecosystems, especially in areas more susceptible to human-induced climatic change such as upwelling and polar marine systems. To help to answer these questions, I use Biologging technologies and Stable Isotope Analyses to improve our understanding of the link between changing environments and the at-sea behaviors of marine top predators.
I was born and raised in Venezuela to Chilean parents and moved to Chile in my teens. After getting my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Marine Biology and Oceanography in Chile at the Universidad de Concepcion, I got awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and moved to the United States to pursue my PhD, where I lived for 15 years as an immigrant scientist, and I now live in England since late 2021.
Most Relevant Publications
Hückstädt LA, A Piñones, DM Palacios, BI McDonald, MS Dinniman, EE Hofmann, JM Burns, DE Crocker & DP Costa. 2020. Projected shifts in the foraging habitat of crabeater seals along the Antarctic Peninsula. Nature Climate Change. Link
Hindell MA, RR Reisinger, Y Ropert-Coudert, LA Hückstädt et al. 2020. Tracking predator communities to protect the Southern Ocean. Nature, 580: 87–92. Link
Hückstädt LA, RR Holser, MS Tift & DP Costa. 2018. The extra burden of motherhood: Reduced dive duration associated with pregnancy status in a deep-diving mammal, the northern elephant seal. Biology Letters, 14(2): 20170722. Link
Hückstädt LA, M McCarthy, PL Koch & DP Costa. 2017. What differences does a century make? Shifts in the ecosystem of the Ross Sea, Antarctica, as evidenced from a sentinel species, the Weddell seal. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 284: 20170927. Link
Hückstädt LA, PL Koch, BI McDonald, M Goebel, D Crocker & DP Costa. 2012. Stable isotope analyses reveal individual variability in the trophic ecology of a top marine predator, the southern elephant seal. Oecologia, 169(2) 395-406. Link
Outreach
