Levi Lewis, Ph.D.

Dr. Levi S. Lewis (lslewis@ucdavis.edu) is a Reseach Scientist and Director of the Otolith Geochemistry and Fish Ecology Laboratory at UC Davis. He is trained as an experimental field ecologist, specializing in trophic interactions, biodiversity, and the ecology of fishes, invertebrates,and their habitats. He attained his BS at UC Davis (Dr. Peter Moyle), MS at San Diego State University (Dr. Todd Anderson), and PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography-UCSD (Dr. Jennifer Smith).  He has published work in a variety of systems including salt marshes (McGourty et al. 2009), pelagic estuaries (Hobbs et al. 2010), seagrass beds (Farlin et al. 2010, Lewis and Anderson 2012), and coral reefs (Smith et al. 2016, Harris et al. 2016, Lewis et al. 2018, Carter et al. 2019, Lewis and Smith 2019).  He is skilled in fish, invertebrate, and algal survey methods and taxonomy; otolith chemistry and imaging; scientific scuba diving and boating; nutrient and chlorophyll analysis; stable isotope analysis; and experimental design and statistics.  Levi's current projects in the OGFL include (1) reconstruction of life histories of Longfin Smelt using strontium isotope chemical analysis of otoliths, (2) evaluating the impacts of climate change on the endangered Delta Smelt, and (3) community analysis of restored estuarine habitats in South San Francisco Bay.