This course fills a six weeks block and consists of the following four components:
- Phytoplankton Ecology
- Zooplankton Ecology
- Benthos and Fish Ecology
- Fisheries Biology and Aquaculture
Plankton ecology:
Role of phyto- and zooplankton in marine food webs. Species inventory and community structure of phyto- and zooplankton. Latitudinal and vertical trends in zooplankton abundance, biomass, biodiversity and feeding behaviour. Sampling methods, qualitative and quantitative analyses of plankton samples.
Benthos and Fish Ecology:
Ecology and species composition of benthos and fish communities in the southern North Sea/German Bight. Role of benthos and fish in marine food webs; species inventory, biodiversity, community structure, trophic interactions, energy budget and secondary production. Methods for sampling and analysing benthos and fish. Methods and models for assessing secondary production.
Fisheries Biology & Aquaculture:
Fisheries biology and fundamental methods of population dynamics; historical overview about the development of fisheries science: early and modern paradigms; fundamentals of fish anatomy and morphology and the role of meristics for species identification; methods of age determination, use of growth bands for growth estimates in different taxonomic groups; theory of growth processes and introduction to commonly used growth models; process of egg and larval development; discussion of the essential role of young stages for population dynamics in fishes; introduction to the production of aquatic organisms under controlled conditions.
Principles of community analysis, biodiversity estimates, calculation of secondary production rates and energy budgets; basics of network analysis.
The students will be able to - apply standard methods of fisheries biology, - understand the complexity of managing marine living resources, - identify different life-stages of fish, - understand the functional morphology of fish, - identify fish species according to morphological characters, - estimate growth rates of fish, - develop an understanding of the role of aquaculture for the sustainable production of fish.