Virtual Summit Submission

University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Marine Biology

Biography

Landon Schumaker is an Honors Program student at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, majoring in marine biology with a minor in business administration. His primary research interest is the ecology of extreme environments, particularly the deep sea. After a series of injuries ended a promising basketball career, Landon pivoted to marine science. His recent research at the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre in Australia involved using advanced statistical models to analyze animal communities at some of the deepest depths of the ocean. This work is contributing to two first-author scientific papers. Landon plans to attend graduate school to continue exploring the deep sea.

Project

Environmental Drivers and Spatial Distribution of Abyssal and Hadal Communities in the Nova Canton Trough
I traveled to Western Australia to work at the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre on a project aimed at understanding the deep-sea communities of the Nova Canton Trough (3,000-8,000 m). My guiding questions aimed to understand what environmental factors drive the spatial distribution of these abyssal and hadal species, and how are their communities structured? I applied a Joint Species Distribution Model (JSDM), which is an advanced statistical method, to a large dataset from 97 baited lander deployments. This model connected species presence and abundance to environmental variables like depth, temperature, and seafloor topography. My findings show a clear hierarchy that depth and temperature are the dominant filters determining if a species can be present. In contrast, fine-scale seafloor features and biotic interactions (like competition between species) were more important in explaining how abundant a species was locally. This research is the first to apply this model to a hadal ecosystem , providing a new, detailed map of life in one of Earth's least-explored frontiers. This helps us better predict how these vulnerable communities are organized.