Pelagic process ecology
Contact person: Josefin Titelman
Keywords: Pattern recognition, imaging, active hydro-acoustics, zooplankton, marine environment
Research groups: Aquatic biology and toxicology (AQUA), dScience
Department of Biosciences
Recent developments in non-invasive instrumentation like active acoustics and imaging allow for high-resolution data of marine ecological processes, many of which involve small plankton animals. Classification and pattern recognition for detecting taxa and quantifying ecological processes in the vast amounts of acquired data remain challenging to pelagic ecologists. Zooplankton are the world?s most abundant animals. Their individual interactions are seminal for the marine environment and global carbon flux. Contemporary understanding of zooplankton ecology stems mostly from traditional net sampling averaging over large spatial scales or from controlled lab experiments revealing sophisticated behavioral processes at tiny scales. The high-resolution instrumentation presents a fabulous opportunity to bridge these scales and shed light on process dynamics even at the smallest spatial and temporal scales. In this theme, candidates will harness data from non-invasive and traditional sources and develop efficient algorithms and data processing pipelines needed to understand ecological processes in the field.
Topics from methodological research:
- Extraction of biologically meaningful information from non-invasive high throughput field sampling
- Pattern recognition in empirical marine data
- Quantitative descriptions of individual movement in the field
- Model the interplay between behavior and distributions from in situ data
- Coupling of physical and biological data and processes
Research team:
- Josefin Titelman (AQUA)
- ?ystein Langangen (AQUA)
- Jan Heuschele (AQUA)
- Tom Andersen (AQUA)
- Svenja Christiansen (dScience)
External partners:
- Institute of Marine Research (IMR)
- Kongsberg Maritime AS
- The Norwegian Mapping Authority
