FS Meteor M118
Cruise summary report
| Cruise Info. | |
| Ship name (ship code) | FS Meteor (06M3) |
| Cruise identifier | M118 |
| Cruise period | 2015-08-20 — 2015-09-04 |
| Status | Completed |
| Port of departure | Rostock, Germany |
| Port of return | Mindelo, Cape Verde |
| Purpose | Passage |
| Objectives | Explaining Latitudinal Diversity Gradients (LDG) is one of the biggest challenges and a key question in ecology. Understanding of spatial diversity structures is highly relevant for applied issues of major concern to humankind, including the control of diseases and their vectors, the effects of global climate change on biodiversity (loss) and ecosystem function(ing) and services, and the spread of invasive species. LDGs are well known and described for macroorganisms since more than two centuries. Due to the sparsity of adequate geographic microbial community surveys and the approaches to analyse such patterns, investigations of LDGs in protistan plankton, an essential component for marine ecosystem function(ing) are still in its infancies. The handful of available studies, all of which are based on meta-data collections from the literature, paint different pictures regarding the presence, absence and strength of LDGs in protistan plankton. Therefore, inferences of hypotheses on mechanisms shaping such patterns are nearly impossible. The transit cruise of RV Meteor from Rostock to Mindelo is a unique opportunity to collect a hitherto unprecedented solid (molecular genotype) dataset to infer possible LDGs and predictors of marine protistan plankton diversity. |
| Chief scientist | Thorsten Stoeck (University of Kaiserslautern, Department of Ecology) |
| Cruise report |  (0.44 MB) |
| NPRC | (0.14 MB) |
| Ocean/sea areas | |
| General | English Channel Baltic Sea North Sea Celtic Sea North East Atlantic Ocean (limit 40W) |
