Effects of climate change on the Mediterranean

From Coastal Wiki
Revision as of 13:42, 31 August 2009 by Daphnisd (talk | contribs) (New page: == Global change and microplankton == ===Microplankton=== Plankton is a collective term for all organisms living in the water column that lack their own means of active movement or wh...)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

Global change and microplankton

Microplankton

Plankton is a collective term for all organisms living in the water column that lack their own means of active movement or whose range of movements are more or less negligible in comparison to the movement of the water mass as a whole. Plankton organisms can range in size from a few metres for large jellyfish and salp colonies to less than a micrometre for bacteria. Within the MarPLAN project the biodiversity of eukaryotic marine single-celled plankton organisms was studied in order to answer the question “In what ways can global change affect microplankton?”


In the temperate zones, many phytoplankton species form blooms during restricted periods of the year. Under influence of global warming, some species show a propensity to bloom earlier in some places. In addition, the distribution of these blooms tends to shift polewards. New species may appear in regions, partly through 38 introduction (for example, via ballast water dumping) and partly through polewards range expansion of warm-water species. Several MarPLAN research partners collaborated on assessing these trends in the dinoflagellate genus Ceratium (Fig. 4).