Meroplankton seasonality in trophic interactions, RIS 5264 (umbrella project)

Many benthic organisms have planktonic life-stages (meroplankton). Meroplankton exhibit strong seasonality and can be quite numerous during peak occurrence. Relatively little is known about their dynamics and food requirements, even though they might have considerable impact both as grazers and as food source for other organism. This project is the second part of my PhD-project. The project aims at investigating seasonal dynamics and diversity of meroplankton in Adventfjorden, Svalbard and to determine their feeding preferences and impact on the system. Since it is very difficult to conclude on timing from only one year time series, which was done in 2012 supported by AFG (for reference see report AFG project number 219707/E10), the aim is to continue s ampling until summer/autumn 2013. This will give us a change to compare the 2 years and increase the possibility to draw stable conclusions on general pattern in timing. Since feeding experiments were only run for 2 of 4 species found to have mass occurre nces in 2012, this project wants to run feeding experiments with the remaining 2 species with mass occurrences. Like the sampling in 2012, it will be tightly coupled to projects investigating the microbial community and phytoplankton and through that, hop es to give more insight in the coupling between microbial loop and the classical food web and the function of meroplankton in the ecosystem. This project will also deliver data and work closely together with a master project, that will investigate the val ue of molecular methods to identify bivalve larvae and their seasonality.