Acronym MixITiN
Category
Fisheries
Title Bringing the paradigm for marine pelagic production into the 21st century: incorporating mixotrophy into mainstream marine research Programme H2020
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source European Coordinator Aditee Mitra Coordinator email mitraa2@cardiff.ac.uk
Coordinator institution
NA
Institutions involved
AWI - Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Germany) ,
NA - AP Marine Environmental Consultancy Ltd (Cyprus) ,
NA - Azti (Spain) ,
NA - Concept Shed Ltd (United Kingdom) ,
NA - Deltares (Netherlands) ,
NA - National Research Council - Institute of Marine Engineering (Italy) ,
NA - Sorbonne Université (France) ,
CSIC - Spanish National Research Council (Spain) ,
NA - The Conversation Trust (UK) Limited (United Kingdom) ,
ULB - Universite Libre De Bruxelles (Belgium) ,
NA - University of Bremen (Germany) ,
KU - University of Copenhagen (Denmark) ,
Start year 2017 End year 2021 Funding (€) € 2,882,898 Website https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/766327 Summary "The basis upon which management tools for our oceans, seas and coasts operate are out-of-date as they assume, incorrectly, that the aquatic food-web operates like the terrestrial food-web.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."
Keywords
Monitoring;
Biology;
Zooplankton;
Food web;
Marine Region
76
Not associated to marine areas
0
Marine Region Map
