My main field of research is phytoplankton ecology.
Keywords: community ecology, multivariate statistics, numerical modelling

Károly Pálffy, Attila W Kovács, Vivien Kardos, Imola Hausz, Gergely Boros (2021) Elevated temperature results in higher compositional variability of pioneer phytoplankton communities in a mesocosm system, Journal of Plankton Research 43(2): 142–155, https://doi.org/10.1093/plankt/fbab013

Pálffy, K., and Vörös, L.. 2019. Phytoplankton functional composition shows higher seasonal variability in a large shallow lake after a eutrophic past. Ecosphere 10( 5):e02684.
https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2684

Biochemistry
Bioclimatology
Biogeochemistry
Bioinformatics
Biology of interactions
Biomathematics
Botanics
Chemistry of Materials
Ecology
Ecophysiology
Electrical engineering, electronics, information engineering
Entomology
Environmental Psychology
Fisheries Science and Technology
Flow of energy and matter
Hydrobiology
Hydrology
Ichthyology
Information sciences and communication
Malacology
Management sciences
Metabolism
Microbiology
Physiology
Population Biology
Quantitative genetics
Sociology of the Environment
Spatial planning and urban development
Zoology

Developing a flexible framework for aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem function monitoring

Although eutrophication is a major threat to freshwater systems, this issue and the countermeasures taken are narrowed down in focus and do not necessarily guarantee a return to improved ecosystem functioning. The problem lies in a knowledge gap: algae form the basis of the aquatic food web, but there is only a limited amount of information about the dynamic pathways transporting the produced organic matter to other trophic levels. Traditional field and laboratory studies cannot overcome the barrier of high spatio-temporal resolution needed to reveal fluxes and community dynamics in detail, or require a tremendous amount of work. Online monitoring platforms have a growing potential to circumvent this bottleneck, however, they still need to be incorporated into a more elaborate infrastructure.

The aim of the present idea is to build a framework of online monitoring stations and citizen science applications, complemented with a set of numerical models, to provide up-to-date and publicly available prognoses about aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Thus, the proposed system is also expected to create a socio-ecological feedback mechanism for more effective biodiversity conservation in aquatic ecosystem. Partners with expertise in food webs, fish ecology, ecological modelling, IT applications, machine learning, sensor-based technologies and sociology are particularly welcome.

aquatic food web, freshwater systems, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish ecology, online monitoring, functional diversity, ecological modelling, sociology

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