Parasites affecting zooplankton behavior

From EESwiki

Keywords: behaviour, ecology, parasites, predators

Introduction: Daphnia have patchy vertical distribution. Typically, they spend the day deep in the lake in darkness, hiding from fish predators, whereas in the evening rise again toward the surface in an effort to find phytoplankton food. It is not known, how parasitic infections affect such adaptive behaviour. For example, parasites lower Daphnia fitness, leaving it without energetic resources necessary to perform vertical migration; however infected Daphnia often suffer increased vulnerability to visual predators, and thus should naturally hide in darkness. This project will investigate the existence of behavioural changes and its fitness trade-offs.

Methods: field study (day and night sampling), laboratory experiment. Learnt skills: designing scientific experiment and field study, field methods, microscopy, statistical analyses, scientific presentation and writing.