Meeting Abstract
Marine microscale plankton are the fundamental drivers of ecological processes in the ocean. These organisms serve as biological engines powering the ocean’s geochemical cycles including carbon sequestration and vertical material transport. Understanding plankton behavior and ecology is therefore essential for understanding our planet’s health and climate. A key aspect of marine ecology is the Diel Vertical Migration (DVM) of plankton, whereby individual plankton migrate over vertical scales orders-of-magnitude greater than their individual size. This is one of the largest migrations of bio-mass on our planet, occurring daily. This vast separation of scales makes mechanistic and quantitative study of plankton physiology (sub-cellular scale) and macroscale behavior (scales of meters), a challenging problem. We present a novel and simple solution to the above mentioned problem using a “Hydrodynamic treadmill”, in conjunction with tracking microscopy to result in a system that allows unrestricted vertical motion of objects while allowing sub-cellular scale imaging at high time resolution. We demonstrate this method by conducting a comparative study of freely swimming marine invertebrate larvae such as P. miniata (Bat Star), P. parvimensis (Sea Cucumber), O. spiculata (Brittle star)and S. purpuratus (Sea Urchin); and marine diatoms, dinoflagellates and marine snow. Our method allows us, for the first time, to measure microscale physiology and micro-behavioral states in marine plankton and directly measure their connections to macroscale behavior. The capabilities of this method may be extended to study sub-cellular scale processes such as calcium signaling and relate them directly to organismal behavior, thus leading to mechanistic insights into plankton behavior.
