The Toralla Marine Science Station, Ecimat, resumed this Tuesday the Café con Sal conference series, an informative activity on marine research topics that has been taking place at the center since 2011 and that, like last year, took a short summer break. The talk on this occasion was given by the head of the Oceanography Unit of the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo, José González, who gave the conference Assessing the effect of oil spills on the dynamics of plankton community using a model, an intervention in which the researcher had the opportunity to talk about how predictive trophic models can be used as a simple tool to interpret variables not measured empirically in a marine ecosystem.
Modeling in marine ecology is used, above all, for predictive purposes, but on certain occasions it is also useful as an interpretative tool to understand the processes involved in determining the structure and dynamics of the food chain. In this sense, and as the researcher explained, models can be used to reproduce the measured variables, which provides important clues to determine which of the unmeasured parameters must be adjusted to reproduce the observations. In this sense, during the talk, the usefulness of modeling to determine the differences between communities or to detect the possible effects of the contribution of nutrients and/or toxins in a given community, even in unmeasured parameters, was emphasized.
In his speech, González presented the use of a simple model, called NPDZ (Nutrients- Phytoplankton- Detritus- Zooplankton), to interpret the results of the mesocosm experiments carried out during the Imprimé na ria de Vigo project, a clear example of the interpretative application of prediction models. Explaining the results of the experiments carried out, the head of the Oceanography Unit of the Ecimat tried to demonstrate that modeling is a powerful tool to explain the differences in the dynamics of different marine microbial communities, which also allows the detection of subtle toxic effects, not always detected by the direct interpretation of empirical data.
The next talk will take place on Tuesday, October 1st and will be given by Pedro Campoy, from the Coastal Ecology group at CIM-UVigo. As usual, it will be at 11:00 am in the Ecimat auditorium.
This series of conferences is possible thanks to the support provided by the Xunta de Galicia through the FEDER/FSE Galicia 2014-2020 Operational Program.
