Applicants

Dr. Bánk Beszteri
Alfred-Wegener-Institut 
Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung 
Sektion Polare Biologische Ozeanographie 

Professor Dr. Gernot Glöckner
Universität zu Köln
Institut für Biochemie I 

Dr. Uwe John
Alfred-Wegener-Institut
Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung 

Dr. Klaus Valentin
Alfred-Wegener-Institut 
Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung 
Sektion Polare Biologische Ozeanographie 

Project Description

Diatoms are the dominant primary producers, the main suppliers for food webs as well as the main drivers of the biological silicate and carbon pumps of the Southern Ocean (SO). Especially some thick shelled species, as exemplified by the well studied Fragilariopsis kerguelensis, have contributed disproportionately to making the SO one of the main silica sinking regions in the Quaternary World ocean. We argue that, due to its biogeography encompassing an enormous geographic area and broad environmental gradients, this species provides a unique system for studying neutral and adaptive microevolutionary processes in biogeochemically important natural phytoplankton populations. We would like to use a field-based combined phenotypic/genomic approach implicitly incorporating factors which are not amenable to laboratory experimenting (in situ demographics and effective population sizes, standing variation, and subpopulation connectivity) to learn about the balance between neutral and adaptive intraspecific microevolutionary processes in this key SO diatom. This knowledge would be important to better understand the biology of these organisms, but it is also critical in the context of global environmental change where one of our largest knowledge gaps in the marine realm currently concerns adaptability in the field.

DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes

Term 2016 to 2020