Dr Katja Peijnenburg (left)

Research Fellow, department of Marine Zoology, Naturalis Biodiversity Center

Researcher, University of Amsterdam

Prof Erica Goetze (right)

Assistant Professor, Department of Oceanography, University of Hawaii

Evolution of marine zooplankton

We are interested in evolution in the open ocean, particularly of marine holozooplankton (the animals that spend their entire life cycle in the open water column). We joined forces on AMT22 and collected lots of zooplankton samples and images (see figure) along the transect. Our aim is to unravel dispersal barriers of a diverse panel of zooplankton species along the Atlantic ocean transect.

Figure legend: Examples of the diverse holozooplankton assemblage of the Atlantic ocean (members of the phyla Arthropoda, Mollusca, Annelida, Cnidaria, and Chaetognatha are represented). Photographed by E. Goetze and K. Peijnenburg during the Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT22) in October-November 2013.

Our recent paper entitled 'high evolutionary potential of marine zooplankton' argues that marine zooplankton are well poised for evolutionary responses to global change. In this paper we review all population genetic studies of open ocean zooplankton, and show that genetic isolation can be achieved at the scale of gyre systems (100s to 1000s of km). We also found that population genetic structure often varies across taxa, and appears to be linked to the particular ecological requirements of the organism. In addition, we present theoretical arguments that suggest plankton species may respond rapidly to selection on mildly beneficial mutations due to exceptionally large population size. In combination, these characteristics should facilitate rapid adaptive evolution to distinct oceanographic habitats in the plankton.

You can also watch the movie explaining the contents of the paper (presented at the European Marine Biology Symposium 2013):