Thomas L. Hopkins
Retired-Emeritus Professor
Biological Oceanography
Ph.D., Florida State University, 1964
Email: thopkin1@tampabay.rr.com
Research Interests
My research primarily centered on pelagic marine ecosystems and oceanic food webs. My initial work was on estuarine plankton biology, followed by a shift toward oceanic research in the Antarctic and low latitude regions such as the Gulf of Mexico. My principal focus was on the role of zooplankton in the food web. This involved studies of the feeding habits of the principal zooplanktivores in pelagic environments, e.g. mid-water fishes, shrimps and squids and the degree to which these predators impact carbon flux in the ocean. Shortly before retirement, I was director of the USF Center For Ocean Technology, whose primary mission was development of new sensors for in situ measurements of key biological, chemical and physical variables.
Selected Publications
Hopkins, T. L. 1966. The plankton of the St. Andrew Bay System. Florida Pub. Inst. Mar. Sci., Univ. Texas 11:12-64. (Dissertation)
Hopkins, T. L. 1969. Zooplankton standing crop in the Antarctic Basin. Limnol. Oceanog. 14: 80-85.
Doyle, L. J., T.L. Hopkins and P.R. Betzer. 1976. Black magnetic spherule fallout in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Science 194:1157-1159.
Hopkins, T.L. 1985. The food web of an Antarctic mid-water ecosystem. Mar. Biol. 89:197-212.
Hopkins, T.L. And J.J. Torres. 1989. Mid-water food web in the vicinity of a marginal ice zone in the western Weddell Sea. Deep-Sea Research. 36:543-560.
Rau, G.H., T.L. Hopkins and J.J. Torres. 1991. 15N/14N and 13C/12C in Weddell Sea invertebrates: implications for feeding diversity. Mar. Biol. Prog. Ser. 77: 1-6.
Hopkins, T.L. and J.V. Gartner, Jr. 1992. Resource-partitioning and predation impact of a low-latitude myctophid community. Mar. Biol. 114:185-197.
Hopkins, T.L., D.G. Ainley, J.J. Torres and T.M. Lancraft. 1993. Trophic structure in open waters of the marginal ice zone in the Scotia-Weddell Confluence region during Spring (1983). Polar Biol. 13:389-397
Hopkins, T.L., T.M. Lancraft, J.J. Torres and J. Donnelly 1993. Community structure and trophic ecology of zooplankton in the Scotia Sea marginal ice zone in winter. (1988). Deep-Sea Res. 40:81-105.
Hopkins, T.L. and T.T. Sutton. 1998. Mid-water fishes and shrimps as competitors and resource partitioning in low latitude oligotrophic ecosystems. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 164:37-45.
Sutton, T.T., T.L. Hopkins, A. Remsen and S. Burghart. 2001. Multisensor sampling of pelagic ecosystem variables in a coastal environment to estimate zooplankton grazing impact. Continental Shelf Res. 21:69-87.
Samson, S., T.L. Hopkins, A. Remsen, L. Langebrake, T. Sutton and J. Patten. 2001. A system for High-Resolution zooplankton imaging. IEEE J. Oceanic Engineering. 26:671-676.
Remsen, A., T.L. Hopkins and S. Samson. 2004. What you see is not what you catch: a comparison of concurrently collected net, Optical Plankton Counter and Shadowed Image Particle Profiling Evaluation Recorder data from the northeast Gulf of Mexico. Deep-sea Res. 51:129-151.
Tong Luo, K. Kramer, D.B. Goldgof, L.O. Hall, S. Samson, A. Remsen and T.L. Hopkins. 2004. Recognizing plankton images from the Shadow Image Particle Profiling Evaluation Recorder. IEEE Trans. On Systems, Man and Cybernetics-Part B. Cybernetics. 34:1753-1762.
Burghart, S.E., T.L. Hopkins and J.J. Torres. 2010. Partitioning of food resources in bathypelagic micronekton in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 399:131-140.
