Zooplankton ecology

Research fields

The work on long-term variations, metabolic activity, and growth of zooplankton as well as methodical aspects are essential parts of IOW research focus "Marine communities and material cycles". Regionally research is focused on the Baltic Sea and the coastal upwelling areas especially off Southwest Africa (Namibia, Angola). Beginning with 2008, the group participates at baseline monitoring of small metazooplankton and jellies between Kiel Bight and Darss sill, in the wider surrounding of a potential permanent Femern Belt - linkage.

The group is internationally interlinked with the ICES (International Council for Exploration of the Sea, Copenhagen) and the Helsinki Commission (Helsinki Commission), such as the ICES Working Group Zooplankton ecology (WGZE) and the HELCOM MONAS Zooplankton expert network (ZEN) respectively. The main aims of the WGZE were compiling a Zooplankton Methodological Manual considering recent methods as well as their classical backgrounds and conducting an ICES - GLOBEC Gear inter-comparison, whose results are still located in the publication stage. Extensive interim results and data sets have been published to a collection of CDs. Also the group contributes to the “Annual status report on the Zooplankton conditions of the North Atlantic“ since several years as background material for research on climate change.

HELCOM MONAS ZEN activities are focused on quality assurance and standardization as well as on more intensive present data sets which exists since 1979 for thematic assessments, for example on “Biodiversity in the Baltic Sea” (BSEP 116B). Within the BMB WG 29 the second edition of "Zooplankton of the open Baltic: Extended Atlas" was published in 2009.

Research in coastal upwelling areas off Southwest Africa were embedded in the so-called BENEFIT program, an initiative sponsored by the World Bank and national donors for investigations of large Marine Ecosystems. Surveys and experiments were completed in 2000. Publications are still in progress in close cooperation with the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen (Norway) and the Instituto de Investigação Marinha, Luanda (Angola). In the moment, the focus is on the balance between food supply (zooplankton production) and food requirements (consumption) by pelagic fish which results in interesting food web structures. Also we are going to deal with bio-geographical patterns of taxonomic groups of common environmental demands and with zooplankton metabolic activity.

The group is engaged in the public relations of IOW as well, answering questions and is involved in the teaching activities at the University of Rostock.