M2C2 webinar: #4 The Selander lab

Date: Wednesday, May 5, 2021
Hour: 9:00 - 11:00 EST 15:00 - 17:00 CET 16:00 - 18:00 IL
About the lab

The Signals in the Sea research group work on chemically mediated interactions in the marine pelagic. We are particularly interested of the role of copepods in the marine food web. Copepods exude a unique bouquet of polar lipids, copepodamides, that induce defensive traits in a wide variety of prey organisms. This includes phycotoxin production, bioluminescence increase, altered swimming behavior and diel feeding rhythms. Copepodamides provide a useful tool to gain mechanistic understanding for chemical communication in plankton. We will present some recent results where we use copepodamides to evaluate defensive traits and tradeoffs, molecular mechanisms, and ecological effects of grazer cues. Finally, we develop new tools based on holographic microscopy and deep learning algorithms to explore the whereabouts of the most important but least known grazers in the sea, the microzooplankton.

Speakers

Group overview

Erik Selander, PI

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Predator-induced defense in a dinoflagellate: yet another paradox of the plankton?

Fredrik Ryderheim, PhD student

Technical University of Denmark

Eavesdropping on plankton - can zooplankton monitoring improve biotoxin forecasting?

Aubrey Trapp, PhD student

University of California, Santa Cruz

Microzooplankton classification and their feeding patterns by digital holographic microscopy and deep learning

Harshith Bachimanchi, PhD student

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Breaking out of chains -grazer induced defenses in diatoms

Kristie Rigby, PhD student

University of Gothenburg, Sweden