Published 25 August 2006
Department of Aquatic Microbiology Aquatic Microbiology studies the ecology of micro-organisms in aquatic environments. Aquatic micro-organisms include viruses, bacteria, phytoplankton, fungi, and zooplankton. Research spans a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from the molecular biology and physiology towards the population dynamics and ecosystem ecology of aquatic micro-organisms.
Predator and prey species may display oscillations in population abundances. When predators increase, their prey populations go down. However, what happens if two predator-prey systems interact? In a new study highlighted in Nature and Science, Elisa Benincà and Jef Huisman of IBED show how the interplay between two predator-prey cycles produces chaos in an experimental food web.
Onderzoekers van AMB, Hans Matthijs en Petra Visser, hebben met een nieuwe methode blauwalgen in recreatieplas Borgerswold in de gemeente Veendam weten aan te pakken. Het onderzoek deden ze samen met Advies- en ingenieursorganisatie ARCADIS. Ongeveer 95 procent van het aantal blauwalgen is nu verdwenen (van 680.000 aantallen algen per ml naar 38.000 per ml). Hierdoor kan het zwemverbod voor de recreatieplas worden opgeheven
Elisa Benincà has been chosen as winner of the WiF Best Publication Prize 2008 for her paper in Nature, Feb 14, 2008: "Chaos in a long-term experiment with a plankton community" (Elisa Benincà, Jef Huisman1, Reinhard Heerkloss, Klaus D. Jöhnk, Pedro Branco, Egbert H. Van Nes, Marten Scheffer & Stephen P. Ellner.) As winner Elisa Benincà will be delivering the Prize Lecture on Tuesday 24th March 16.00-17.00 hours during the WiF Annual Meeting, which will commence at 13.30 hours in the Turingzaal, CWI, (Science Park 123 / Kruislaan 413, Amsterdam).
Prof. dr. Jef Huisman and Dr. Jolanda Verspagen featured on Dutch national television in a program discussing algal blooms in lake Volkerak. They gave their expert opinion on the causes and possible solution of recurring blooms of cyanobacteria in the Dutch lake Volkerak. Lake Volkerak is a former estuary in the southwest of the Netherlands, between the provinces of Brabant and Zeeland. As one of the last projects in the Dutch Deltaworks, it was closed off from the Eastern Scheldt by the Philipsdam in 1987. Thereby, this former estuary became the third largest freshwater system in the Netherlands. However, from the early 1990s onwards, only a few years after closure of the Philipsdam, the phytoplankton of the lake became completely dominated by the harmful cyanobacterium Microcystis, which forms dense surface blooms every summer. This has led to mass mortalities of birds, swimming is not allowed in the lake during summer, and water from the lake can no longer be used for agricultural purposes. The program called "Nederland onder Water" aired on Tuesday 28 October 2008 at 19:55 hours on Nederland 2.
On Wednesday September 3, the Delta Committee chaired by Prof. Veerman, our former minister of agriculture, presented its report on the long-term protection of the Netherlands against sea level rise. In the Monday 8 September issue of the Dutch newspaper 'NRC Handelsblad", Prof. Huisman, Chair of the Aquatic Microbiology research group of the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED), explained why he has serious doubts about some of the scientific conclusions of the committee.
In St. Johns, in Canada, Elisa Benincà has won the Outstanding Student Presentation Award at the annual summer meeting of the American Society for Limnology & Oceanography (ASLO). ASLO is America's leading scientific society in aquatic ecology and oceanography, and usually attracts 2000-3000 participants to its annual meetings. The prize is awarded for Elisa's presentation 'Chaos in a long-term experiment with a plankton community', and was praised by the international jury as one of the highlights of the ASLO congress.
Hans Matthijs (IBED-AMB) won the first prize with his idea for an intellingent lamp for continuous biological photosynthesis. As he explained, photosynthesis is a very inefficient process with a fast adsorption of light alternated by a slow transformation phase during which the plant does not need light. Using LED lamps and an intelligent way of switching them on and off very rapidly one can provide light exclusively during the phase where the plant actually uses it. This way, he calculated that one can save up to 70% in energy, while still yielding the same plant growth.
‘Blooms like it hot', argue Jef Huisman (IBED, University of Amsterdam ) and Hans Paerl (University of North Carolina, USA) in Science. Global warming creates favorable conditions for harmful cyanobacteria, because they respond more strongly to rising temperatures than most other algal species. This is likely to affect the water quality of many aquatic ecosystems worldwide, especially during summer heatwaves.
As one of several initiatives to promote women and increase their academic recognition, the Women in the FNWI (WiF) Network has inaugurated an annual prize for the best scientific publication. A jury of six external experts, covering all scientific fields of the FNWI, has awarded the first Best Publication Prize to Maayke Stomp.
New research conducted by Elisa Benincà and Jef Huisman (IBED-AMB), together with colleagues from other universities in the Netherlands, Germany and the United States. The traditional idea of the balance of nature has taken quite a beating in a study that is published in the 14 February issue of Nature. Using a long-term laboratory experiment, the study demonstrated that species in a marine food web continued to fluctuate in a chaotic fashion even under constant conditions. This makes long-term prediction of species abundances impossible.
Three years ago, Maayke Stomp and Jef Huisman of IBED published the results of intriguing laboratory experiments, demonstrating that red and green plankton species can coexist by partitioning of a white light spectrum. In the years thereafter, they traveled around the world to sample lakes and seas. Their samples now confirm the laboratory findings. The new findings were recently published in the leading journal Ecology Letters, and have been selected as Editor's Choice in Science
Source: IBED
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elisa benincà wins aslo presentation award
