Marine food webs
Food webs within the marine environment demonstrate the
extremely complex feeding relationships between organisms, and
describing and comparing them is a difficult task. However, an
understanding of how food webs function is imperative if we are to
predict how impacts upon one or more species could affect the
entire ecosystem. Whilst the effects of human activities in the
deep sea are unlikely to be as severe as in the coastal zone, some,
such as the removal of predators or the accumulation of toxins,
could alter food webs and thus have a widespread effect.
PML is developing statistical techniques to describe and
understand more fully the complex relationships that exist within
communities and the mechanisms that drive change and these are
being used to analyse observational data.
For studies that operate below the species level, the generation
of huge quantities of molecular data brings with it new challenges
for data handling and interpretation. PML is developing novel
statistical approaches, allowing researchers to interrogate these
results and extract meaningful results from a cacophony of
biological noise.
Projects
- Channel
integrated Approach for marine Resource Management
(CHARM)
CHARM is an EU InterReg project which is
assessing the key marine species and their habitats in the
eastern English Channel and is developing prototype management
tools. The latest phase of the programme includes the western
English Channel and the southern North Sea and new expertise (e.g.
plankton and climate change) has been added to the CHARM
team.