News from Centre for Ocean Life

Can hydrodynamics help prey transport in microbial filter feeders?

Many protists take advantages of surface motility by utilizing microtubule-filled extensions to capture and handle prey particles. Some flagellates, e.g choanoflagellates...

Ambient flows and feeding currents of sessile suspension feeders

Sessile suspension feeders live attached to surfaces and rely on self-generated feeding currents to bring in suspended prey. A new study published in Journal of the Royal...

Clear benefits without direct costs in dinoflagellate defenses

Many dinoflagellates produce toxins in response to grazers, but costs have been hard to establish experimentally. A new Ocean Life paper examines the effect of nutrient...

Foraging trade-offs in flagellates: To eat and not be eaten – that is the (impossible...

In most organisms foraging implies elevated exposure to predators. Such foraging trade-offs are universal and are main determinants of the structure and function of ecosystems...

Feeding flows of microorganisms attached to solid surfaces

Many aquatic microorganisms attach to solid surfaces while creating feeding flows that bring prey particles to them. A new paper in Physical Review Fluids explores how...

PhD scholarship in Fluid dynamics, evolution, and ecology of flagellate foraging

The Centre for Ocean Life at DTU Aqua, Technical University of Denmark, offers a PhD scholarship in ‘Fluid dynamics, evolution, and ecology of flagellate foraging...

Sponge pumps and evolution of the sponge body plan

Pumping units in most sponges possess a gasket structure ensuring efficient pumping and filtration. However, some sponges lack such structure in their pumping units and...

Why is growth of fish so variable?

To tether or not to tether

Many or most flagellates are tethered to particles when feeding, and it is generally accepted that attachment allows organisms to enhance their feeding flow. This view...

A general size- and trait-based model of plankton communities

Most models of plankton communities, such as NPZ-type models, ignore the life-cycle (ontogeny) of multicellular zooplankton. Here, we propose a model framework along the...

Size-based theory for fisheries advice

Today’s advice for fisheries management uses the venerable “Beverton-Holt” theory of fish demography. The theory describes the abundance of fish of different...

How are marine organisms adapted to seasonality?

One of the most conspicuous features over much of the world’s oceans is the seasonal variation in environmental conditions (e.g. light, temperature, nutrients, food...

Three PhD defenses coming up at the Centre

Three PhD students at the Ocean Life Centre will defend their dissertations in the coming weeks giving us all something to look forward to as 2020 draws to a close. ...

Open science to manage redistributing fish

Marine fish are rapidly shifting their spatial distributions under climate change across the globe. Building the capacity to track species range shifts is essential for...

Do fish grow faster in warmer waters?

Large-scale climate change projections of fish generally assume that warming waters enhance fish growth. If correct, tropical fish should grow much faster than temperate...

Commonly assumed organismal trade-off falsified

Biodiversity is governed by organismal trade-offs, but a commonly assumed trade-off, the gleaner-exploiter trade-off, does not exist. This is demonstrated in a new paper...

Fish are neither right- nor left-brained

New book on fish physiology

With over 30,000 species, fishes are the most abundant and diverse vertebrates on the planet. This new edition of the textbook ‘The Physiology of Fishes’ explores...

Diatoms increase their defense when they smell danger

Diatoms live in a protective silica shell. A new study demonstrates that diatoms increase the thickness of the shell in the presence of their copepod predators but at the...

Optimality of long-distance migrations

In a new paper, researchers from the Centre for Ocean Life explore the way behavioural traits can influence long-distance migration patterns of large organisms such as...