* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Download illustrated
Deep sea fish wikipedia , lookup
History of research ships wikipedia , lookup
Indian Ocean wikipedia , lookup
Blue carbon wikipedia , lookup
The Marine Mammal Center wikipedia , lookup
Marine debris wikipedia , lookup
Marine microorganism wikipedia , lookup
Physical oceanography wikipedia , lookup
Marine life wikipedia , lookup
Anoxic event wikipedia , lookup
Marine habitats wikipedia , lookup
Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment wikipedia , lookup
Effects of global warming on oceans wikipedia , lookup
Marine biology wikipedia , lookup
Marine pollution wikipedia , lookup
Ocean acidification wikipedia , lookup
Ecosystem of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre wikipedia , lookup
Contact: Lisa Horton tel: +44 (0)1603 592764 email: [email protected] Communication Office University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ United Kingdom Web: www.uea.ac.uk/comm EMBARGO: 00.01 BST (London Time) FRIDAY, JULY 19, 2013 First global atlas of marine plankton reveals remarkable underwater world Under the microscope, they look like they could be from another planet. But near infinite numbers of microscopic organisms inhabit the depths of our oceans. Now researchers from the University of East Anglia have helped to compile the first ever global atlas of marine plankton - published today in a special issue of the journal Earth System Science Data. They are part of an international team who have identified where, when and how much oceanic plankton can be found around the globe – ranging in size from bacteria to jellyfish. Oceans cover 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface and are on average 4 km deep. But until now, little was known about the composition of this enormous ecosystem. The atlas, known as MAREDAT, will help researchers better understand marine biodiversity for conservation and monitoring. The data will also have wide-ranging applications across ocean and climate science – such as helping scientists create computer models to predict the impact of climate change and ocean acidification. Dr Erik Buitenhuis from UEA’s school of Environmental Studies said: “The ocean ecosystem is completely dominated by small organisms. There are virtually no plants in the ocean and the base of the food chain is formed by algae that are between one thousandth and one fifth of a millimetre in size. They are far too small to see with the human eye, but they look amazing under the microscope. “They’re very important too. The marine ecosystem provides many services to humankind, including creating enough oxygen for every other breath we take. “They also play an important role in the ocean’s carbon cycle by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and storing it deep under the sea – isolated from the atmosphere for centuries. So this new data is extremely valuable to help us predict climate change and its associated consequences. “As well as being vital to climate control, plankton is also the base of the food chain for fisheries so it is incredibly important for food security. “One of the most interesting things that we found is that there is as much zooplankton (animals and other heterotrophs) as phytoplankton (photosynthetic/plant-like organisms). This is really astonishing, given that on land the ratio between plant and animal biomass is around 500:1,” he added. The first edition of the MAREDAT global plankton atlas took three years to compile and combines information from half a million data points. It is the result of a collaboration between scientists at UEA and ETH Zurich, along with the University of Manchester, Université d’Angers and CNRS, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “This was difficult work and only feasible in collaboration with a range of experts,” said Meike Vogt from the Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics at ETH Zurich, who cocoordinated the project. “The conversion of abundance data to biomass requires an understanding of the differences in cell and organism size, life stages, and volume to carbon ratios among different species of the same functional group, parameters that are poorly quantified for many plankton taxa.” The authors hope that the new MAREDAT atlas will serve as a starting place to expand the atlas and fill missing regions that are currently under-sampled, such as the South Pacific and parts of the Southern Ocean. It is the first step towards a comprehensive inventory of the marine biota based on counts of individual cells or organisms. The MAREDAT global atlas is published as a special edition of the journal Earth System Science Data. Attachment: Figures showing the atlas in the surface ocean and the types of organisms in the atlas. ENDS EDITOR’S NOTES 1/ For more information, or to arrange an interview with Dr Erik Buitenhuis, please contact Lisa Horton in the UEA press office by emailing [email protected] or call +44 (0)1603 592764. 2/ The University of East Anglia (UEA) was founded in 1963 and this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. It has played a significant role in advancing human understanding and in 2012 the Times Higher Education ranked UEA as one of the 10 best universities in the world under 50 years of age. The university has graduated more than 100,000 students, attracted to Norwich Research Park some of Britain’s key research institutes and a major University Hospital, and made a powerful cultural, social and economic impact on the region. www.uea.ac.uk/50years 3/ UEA’s school of Environmental Sciences is one of the longest established, largest and most fully developed of its kind in Europe. In the last Research Assessment Exercise, 95 per cent of the school’s activity was classified as internationally excellent or world leading, and it was ranked 3rd in the Guardian League Table 2013. It was ranked joint second in the country for teaching in the 2012 National Student Survey. www.uea.ac.uk/env Figure 1. Average PFT (plankton functional type) biomass [µg C l-1] in the top 200 m. (Pico) Picophytoplankton, (Diaz) diazotrophs, (Cocco) coccolithophores, (Phae) Phaeocystis, (Diat) diatoms, (Chl) HPLC chlorophyll * PlankTOM5.3 C: Chl ratio, (Bac) picoheterotrophs, (Micro) microzooplankton, (Fora) foraminifers, (Meso) mesozooplankton, (Pter) pteropods, (Macro) macrozooplankton. Figure 2. Example pictures of the PFTs in Figure 1. All pictures are creative commons. Left, from top to bottom: Prochlorococcus marinus (W.K.W. Li & F.Partensky), Trichodesmium sp. (Karine Leblanc), Coccolithus pelagicus (Richard Lampitt, Jeremy Young), Phaeocystis globosa (Peter Countway), Thalassiosira gravida (Katie Miller) , vertical net sampling (Ralf Schiebel) Right, from top to bottom: Joostella marina (Manfred Rohde), Ceratocorys horrida (Maria Faust), Beella digitata (Ralf Schiebel), Calanoida sp. (Uwe Kils), Clione limacina (Nina Bednarsek, Bertrand Leze), Aurelia labiata (Tiergarten Schönbrunn)