Publications
Following publication has been announced by our Institute of Carbon Cycles. For further information please contact Jana Hinners or Dr. Klas Ove Möller, co-authors of the publication:
Grigoratou, M., Montes, E., Richardson, A.J., Everett, J.D., Acevedo-Trejos, E., Anderson, C., Chen, B., Guy-Haim, T., Hinners, J., Lindemann, C., Garcia, T.M., Möller, K.O., Monteiro, F.M., Neeley, A.R., O’Brien, T.D., Palacz, A.P., Poulton, A.J., Prowe, A.E.F., Rodríguez-Santiago, Á.E., Rousseaux, C.S., Runge, J., Saad, J.F., Santi, I., Stern, R., Soccodato, A., Våge, S., Vogt, M., Zervoudaki, S., & Muller-Karger, F.E. (2022): The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Plankton Workshops: Plankton Ecosystem Function, Biodiversity, and Forecasting—Research Requirements and Applications. Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin, doi:10.1002/lob.10479
Introduction (excerpt):
Plankton is a massive and phylogenetically diverse group of thousands of prokaryotes, protists (unicellular eukaryotic organisms), and metazoans (multicellular eukaryotic organisms; Fig. 1). Plankton functional diversity is at the core of various ecological processes, including productivity, carbon cycling and sequestration, nutrient cycling (Falkowski 2012), interspecies interactions, and food web dynamics and structure (D’Alelio et al. 2016). Through these functions, plankton play a critical role in the health of the coastal and open ocean and provide essential ecosystem services. Yet, at present, our understanding of plankton dynamics is insufficient to project how climate change and other human-driven impacts affect the functional diversity of plankton. That limits our ability to predict how critical ecosystem services will change in the future and develop strategies to adapt to these changes.
The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON), with the support of the Modelling Different Components of Marine Plankton Biodiversity team (MODIV), organized four virtual workshops titled: “Plankton ecosystem functions, biodiversity, and forecasting – research requirements and applications”. The objectives of the workshops were to: (1) identify requirements with respect to the definition of essential ocean variables (EOVs) and associated measurements, as well as compile the data needed to address critical knowledge gaps related to the role of plankton biodiversity functions to provide ecosystem services; (2) discuss ways to better link empirical observations to theoretical concepts of plankton biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics; and (3) suggest methods to better communicate the value of plankton to peers and non-scientific audiences.
