Present automated systems for counting and measunng marine plankton include flow cytometers and in situ plankton video recorders. Neither of these approaches are optimal for the microplankton cells which range in size from 20 to 200 pm and can be fewer than 104 1". We describe here an instrument designed for rapid counting, imaging and measuring of individual cells and particles in the micropla...

The world's oceans represent by far the largest biome, with great importance for the global ecosystem [1-4]. The vast majority of ocean biomass and biodiversity is composed of microscopic plankton. Recent results from the Tara Oceans metabarcoding study revealed that a significant part of the plankton in the upper sunlit layer of the ocean is represented by an understudied group of heterotrophi...

The distribution of dinoflagellate toxins (OA, DTXs, PTXs, YTXs) in plankton communities was studied in the northern Baltic Sea during late summers of 2005 and 2006. The phycotoxins were analysed from samples that contained field collected microplankton in the size range of 20–76 μm, zooplankton collected with a net, and individually hand-picked copepods from open-sea and coastal sampling stati...

introduction the dynamic state index (dsi) is being introduced on the basis of a newly developed theory termed the energy-vorticity theory (evt). as a weather index, the dsi can describe the temporal sequence and intensity of areas of high and low pressure; but as a climate index, it can also diagnose climate change based on the variation in solar radiation or the influences of friction. in phy...

North Atlantic climate variability does not only have an influence on North Atlantic ecosystems as described in the previous chapters and by Drinkwater et al. (2003), but influences terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems across the Northern Hemisphere (Ottersen et al. 2001; Mysterud et al. 2003; Stenseth et al. 2002; Straile et al. 2003b). Its impact on freshwater ecosystems has been documented ...

The pluteus larval forms of sea urchins (echinoids) and brittlestars (ophiuroids) use an internal skeleton to project arms that bear a long ciliated band used in swimming and feeding. The length of this ciliated band influences rates of maximum food clearance for larvae of both echinoderm classes and affects rates of growth and development in the plankton. Phylogenetic and morphological evidenc...

Ecological adaptation to environmental changes is a strong driver of evolution, enabling speciation of pelagic plankton in the open ocean without the presence of effective physical barriers to gene flow. The tropical ocean environment, which plays an important role in shaping marine biodiversity, has drastically and frequently changed since the Pliocene. Nevertheless, the evolutionary history o...