We study the effects of local and global change on aquatic, chemical, and microbial ecology using lipidomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, genomics, and modern Bayesian modeling tools. We currently study how climate change affects the nutritional quality of components of freshwater food webs and the decomposition and biotransformation of natural and synthetic polymers, including microplastics. The interactive effects of environmental change and microplastics are also studied at the population, organismal, biochemical, and transcriptomic levels in zooplankton. Additionally, we work with the plastic recycling economy on several projects.
In aquatic nutritional ecology, we have been developing methods to estimate zooplankton diets and, for the first time, unraveled the food components of the main herbivorous zooplankton (Daphnia and Eudiaptomus) in boreal lakes. Our results show that Daphnia feed unselectively, whereas Eudiaptomus selectively feeds on golden algae, as indicated by our 8-year data from Lake Vesijärvi. Moreover, in the ZOO-PUFA project (funded by RCF), we are unraveling biosynthetic pathways for LC-PUFA in freshwater zooplankton in collaboration with Associate Professor Naoki Kabeya at Tokyo University. We are also using hydrogen of fatty acids to estimate how much zooplankton and planktivorous fish endogenously synthesize LC-PUFA. This part of the project is being done in collaboration with Professor Martin Kainz and Matthias Pilecky from Danube University.
