BB506: Marine and Brackish Water Ecology

The course will take place at the Marine Biological Research Center in Kerteminde.
The course will be offered in the summer. The exact starting date will be discussed with the registered students.

The course has limited entry. The following criteria are taken into consideration when seats are assigned.

1. Students with the most ECTS from their BSc. in Biology. 
2. Other students enrolled in a natural scientific program on with the most ECTS

The academic environments at The faculty of Science manages the prioritisation and at waiting list is established and will then be made aware from the faculty. The waiting list will not be transferred to the following year.
It is important to turn up for the first day of the course or notify the lecturer, as there is a waiting list.

Life emerged from the sea and therefore there are many reasons why students of biology should study marine and brackish water ecology. Understanding how organisms are dependent on one another (food web), will help students to better understand how all organisms— including humans—are linked and why changes to one part of the food chain almost always impact another.

Here, we will investigate the food web dynamics of marine and brackish-water with special focus on the role of gelatinous top-predators. In a nutshell, we will run 

1. field sampling on biotic and abiotic components of the Kerteminde Fjord/Kertinge Nor to study planktonic community ecology. A day sampling on different trophic levels (phytoplankton, zooplankton, and macroplankton) will be conducted. Samples will be analyzed later in the lab. 
2. using the state-of-the-art of technologies to study the spatial distribution of macroplankton such as jellyfish. SDU in-house Drones will be used to track the spatial distribution of macroplankton in Kerteminde Fjord/Kertinge Nor. Image analysis will be carried out in the lab.

Students will be working in groups that rotate to give everybody an equal chance to be engaged in all three activities. 

• Gain a theoretical background on how marine and brackish food web structures
• Get familiar with simple patterns and processes in the food web
• Get familiar with sampling, preparation and taxonomic identification of Phyto and zooplankton
• Get practiced implying novel in-situ visualization techniques to understand the population ecology of macroplankton. 

• Students will take part in a day sampling and collect water samples and apply net samples. They will measure and analyze abiotic factors such as salinity and temperature.
• Participants will get trained on the drone technique and will collect information on the spatial distribution of macroplankton. Images will be analyzed and converted to give population distribution.
• A group presentation 

5 ECTS corresponds to a workload of approximately 50 hours.

Activities: field activity includes data collection from Kertinge Nor from the shore, or on board the boat. Data collection includes hydrographical parameters, habitat mapping using both direct observations (transects) and drone mapping, and plankton sampling (net and water sampling) 

Lab activities include counts of biota (taxonomy, size distribution patterns), abundance measurements, and feeding or settlement experiments. 

Data analysis includes visualization and plotting the data, running statistical tests, and dealing with data exploration.

Clarification: unlike other theoretical courses, in which the definition of each teaching phase needs to be clarified, BB506 corresponds to a field course activity with sometimes working hours over the regular daily working hours.