MixITiN · Bringing the paradigm for marine pelagic production into the 21st century: incorporating mixotrophy into mainstream marine research

Bringing the paradigm for marine pelagic production into the 21st century: incorporating mixotrophy into mainstream marine research

The basis upon which management tools for our oceans, seas and coasts operate are out-of-date as they assume, incorrectly, that the aquatic food-web operates like the terrestrial food-web. Thus, the expectation is that the single-celled “plant-like” phytoplankton produce food in the oceans through photosynthesis. These are then assumed to be eaten by single-celled “animal-like” microzooplankton which themselves are eaten by larger organisms, and so on up to fish and other top predators. Over the last decade we have shown that this assumed plant-animal division at the base of marine food-webs is incorrect. The new paradigm recognises that most of the single-celled organisms at the base of the oceanic food-web can hunt like animals and also photosynthesize like plants, simultaneously. These organisms are the mixoplankton; they use multiple strategies to acquire nutrition. Many if not most of the organisms traditionally labelled as phytoplankton and as much as half of the organisms traditionally labelled as microzooplankton are actually mixoplankton. By mislabelling the organisms that form the base of the marine food chain, science and thence management policies have been hitherto labouring under false assumptions, with serious consequences. Mixoplankton play a central role in the marine ecosystems and therefore in ecosystem services. As food for fish, mixoplankton support fisheries especially the juvenile fish during the summer months. Mixoplankton are also important in biogeochemical cycles as they remove atmospheric CO2. On the other hand, various mixoplankton can also cause severe harmful algal bloom events which can lead to extensive fish kills and closure of shellfisheries. Thus, from a societal point of view it is important to have an understanding of the conditions which lead to the proliferation of the mixoplankton – good or bad. The overarching objective of MixITiN was development and deployment of new methodologies for researching, monitoring and modelling the mixoplankton-based marine food chain to aid in updating environmental management tools and policies, and also to train the first of the next generation of marine researchers in the new paradigm. At the end of 4 years, both those objectives have been met. A range of peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts have been published, and a suite of open access manuals (guides for field and laboratory techniques, protocols for molecular techniques and models for in silico experiments) have been developed and published. These manuals will not only enable the marine sector to start to integrate mixoplankton-facing research within their activities but also provide education material for the generation beyond MixITiN.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз