SCOR Working Group 165 (2022 – ) Mixotrophy in the Oceans – Novel Experimental designs and Tools for a new trophic paradigm
Chairs: Aditee Mitra & George McManus
The overarching aim of this project is to propose methods to determine contributions of mixoplankton to primary and secondary productions. MixONET thus comprises an international collaborative multidisciplinary team of experts in ecophysiology & molecular biology of mixoplankton, field sampling & monitoring technology, biological & physical oceanography. The objectives and terms of references of MixONET will make a solid contribution to addressing priorities of the United Nations Ocean Decade.
2023 Highlights:
- Publication of the first comprehensive database of marine mixoplankton, the Mixoplankton Database (MDB), bringing together extant knowledge of the identity, allometry, physiology, and trophic interactivity of these organisms.
- Luciana Santoferrara [USA] was awarded a grant from the “Exceptional” Call for SCOR Project and Working Groups Scholars to work with Fernando Unrein [Argentina]. The goal of the project was to design and test a methodology to isolate and identify nano-mixoplankton, using a combination of feeding experiments, flow cytometry and DNA metabarcoding. Read more about this project here.
- MixONET delivered a special session ‘The New Paradigm Testing the Resilience of Our Science in the UN Ocean Decade‘ at ASLO Aquatic Sciences meeting 2023. Further details, including abstracts, are available here.
