Plankton – Neil Banas

Calanus glacialis and the lightscape of fear

Diel vertical migration in zooplankton—in which many taxa like copepods move downward into darkness during the day and back up toward surface in order to feed at night—has been described as the largest animal migration on the planet. But what really are the tradeoffs and behavioural rules that govern this, in the more complex form … Read more

Bowhead whales and plankton teleconnections

Disko Bay, West Greenland is at the end of oceanic “rivers” of Calanus copepods (red/orange lines below) that enter the bay in winter, still in diapause. They form a really dense, deep layer, and bowhead whales come from a wide area (purple) to eat them. So how much of the Calanus standing stock do the … Read more

origamiplankton.org!

origamiplankton.org for copepod diagrams, exhibition photos, and really big krill.

Early warning for Pseudo-nitzschia HABs on Pacific Northwest beaches: From plankton ecology to operational decision support

Certain species of the phytoplankton Pseudo-nitzschia (PN) produce a potent neurotoxin, domoic acid (DA), that bioaccumulates in shellfish, and can cause severe illness and death in humans. Past outbreaks have caused fisheries closures and millions of dollars of losses to crab and clam harvesters, and contributed to the death of many species of marine mammals. … Read more

Coltrane (Copepod Life-history Traits and Adaptation to Novel Environments)

The Coltrane (Copepod Life history Traits and Adaptation to New Environments) model is a mathematical framework for layering multiple levels of mesozooplankton biology on top of oceanographic models. It resolves 1) individual life history (strategy traits controlling growth, development, and size, diagnosed from a broad review of lab studies); 2) population dynamics (the time-dependent energy … Read more

The Bering Sea in spring, 1971-2050

The Eastern Bering Sea hosts extremely rich pelagic and benthic fisheries, and also experiences strong interannual variation in both fisheries recruitment and the underlying physics and plankton biology. This paper…

Adding fine-scale trophic complexity to a plankton model

Natural plankton communities are far more diverse than even a very complicated numerical model can account for. The ASTroCAT model (Allometric/Stochastic Trophic Complexity Analysis Tool) is an experiment in systematically resolving the complexity in phytoplankton–microzooplankton trophic interactions, and exploring the effects of this complexity on ecosystem structure, function, and predictability. This paper… Banas NS (2011) … Read more

Visualizing nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplankton dynamics

interactive model here.

Invasive green crab in Willapa Bay (2009)

Banas NS, MacDonald PS, Armstrong DA (2009) Green crab larval retention in Willapa Bay, Washington: An intensive Lagrangian modeling approach.

Biophysical modeling of the Columbia River plume (2009)

The model As part of the NSF RISE (River Influences on Shelf Ecosystems) program, my collaborators and I coupled a four-box ecosystem model to a high-resolution hindcast of the Washington-Oregon coast, to examine Columbia River plume effects on coastal biological production. For more information, see Banas NS, Lessard E, Kudela R, MacCready P, Peterson T, … Read more

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