Plankton Portal Talk

Plankton analysis "vertical migration"

  • Nico_S by Nico_S

    Hi , 😃
    I´m an German student and researching plankton at the "starnberger" lake for a school project.
    The main focus is on the vertical migration of plankton at the sunset.

    I fished the plankton every hour from 2h before until 2h after the sunset.
    Afterwards i analysed it with a mikroskope and classified the amount of Phytoplankton, Daphnia and copepods.
    for more accuracy i did this 3 times and summarized it. then I had the frequency levels from 0-9.
    Thats how the results look like:

    Probe 1 - 20.09.2016 - every hour
    01

    Probe 2 - 24.09.2016 - every hour
    02

    Probe 3 - 29.09.2016 - half-hour
    03

    Probe 4 - 07.10.2016 - every hour
    04

    Probe 5 - 30.10.2016 - every hour
    05

    The graphs have interesting similarities.
    The biggest question i have at the moment is : why has Phytoplankton a low 1h after sunset and copepods during the sunset?

    Thanks in advance,
    Nico

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish moderator, translator

    Hi Nico,

    It is quite an interesting school project you're working on.

    I am sorry I can't answer your question. But I'll ask our scientists whether some of them could be helpful here.

    Cheers,
    Zuzi

    Posted

  • jo.irisson by jo.irisson translator, scientist

    That is a nice project indeed. To interpret the plot I would need to know:

    • which depth did you collect the plankton at? If you want to look at vertical migration you usually collect plankton at several depths.

    • what is the unit of the values on your plots? Also, you mention they result from averaging over 3 times, what are those "3 times"?

    Posted