When it comes to studies of species abundance, scientists have spent a lot of time looking into where, exactly, particular plants or animals thrive or survive in a particular ecosystem. But, harnessing the relatively recent rise of long-term datasets, a new study published online in the journal PLOS ONE found that, for some species, it matters …
As spring moves to summer, an unprecedented scientific collaboration is sending researchers around the globe scrambling into their boats and simultaneously heading out onto the world’s lakes. It’s called “Spring Blitz,” and, from Wisconsin to Florida to Switzerland, scientists are out monitoring everything from water temperature to dissolved oxygen to plankton communities as lakes in …
A trip out sampling on Lake Mendota this morning yielded a robust catch of the zooplankton (tiny animal), Daphnia, a miniscule, yet voracious crustacean that goes to town on phytoplankton (tiny plant) populations that are blooming throughout the upper reaches of the water column. Spring plankton community, Lake Mendota from Center for Limnology on Vimeo. …