The FSU CML Polar Academy team has started their AntICE Initiative: reaching out to school children in the Tallahassee and Crawfordville areas to inform them about Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems in light of the upcoming NSF funded workshop at the FSU Coastal and Marine Lab in November.
Worldwide publicity surrounding the calving of an iceberg the size of Delaware in July 2017 from the Larsen C Ice Shelf on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula presents a unique and time-sensitive opportunity for research and education on polar ecosystems in a changing climate. The FSUCML will host a workshop that will draw from the large fund of intellectual capital in the US and international Antarctic research communities.
New research by a Florida State University scientist has examined how oil and other hydrocarbons in Antarctica affect miniature organisms called meiofauna that slip through the sediment widely unnoticed to the casual observer.
Coverage of MDPI Diversity article Ingels, J. O. G., Valdes, Y., Pontes, L., Silva, A., Neres, P., Correa, G., Silver-Gorges, I., Fuentes, M., Gillis, A., Hooper, L., Ware, M., O'Reilly, C., Bergman, Q., Danyuk, J., Sanchez Zarate, S., Acevedo Natale, L., & dos Santos, G. (2020). Meiofauna Life on Loggerhead Sea Turtles-Diversely Structured Abundance and Biodiversity Hotspots That Challenge the Meiofauna Paradox. Diversity MDPI, 12(5), 20
The small organisms that slip unnoticed through sand play an important role in keeping our oceans healthy and productive, according to a Florida State University researcher.
In the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, Jeroen Ingels, a researcher at the FSU Coastal and Marine Laboratory, explains that small organisms called meiofauna that live in the sediment provide essential services to human life such as food production and nutrient cycling.
Read the full article here
Coverage by Science Daily
Seaweeds help capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transport it off shore where it gets buried or enters the sedimentary foodweb. The meiofauna research in this new study conducted by Jeroen Ingels and several team members at Plymouth Marine Laboratory showed that meiofauna consumes macroalgae and zooplankton further away from shore and help process the seaweed remains. Read the news articles here (FSU) and here (EurekAlert). The original study is open access and available here.
"Biologists will discuss research priorities for Larsen C and future exposed regions at a swiftly organized meeting at Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory in St Teresa on 18–19 November", organized by Drs. Ingels (FSU CML), Rich Aronson (Florida Institute of Technology) and Craig Smith (University of Hawaii, Manoa)
Read Nature article here
New research led by Dr. Jonny Stark (Australian Antarctic Division) in collaboration with a Florida State University scientist (Dr. Jeroen Ingels) has examined how oil and other hydrocarbons in Antarctica affect miniature organisms called meiofauna that slip through the sediment widely unnoticed to the casual observer.
Read article here
The JEMBE article is available here
