Visitors

Last year, the Marine Ecology Laboratory hosted two student exchanges, Kierstin Rieder and Katrin Stobbe, from the university of Roctock, Germany.
Below is the latest from report from Kerstin, who is now back in Germany pursuing her studies.

Kerstin Rieder

Many anthropogenic activities which result in environmental changes are strongly concentrated on coastal areas. Sandy beach meiofauna plays an important role in the benthic ecosystem and has a high sensitivity to anthropogenic disturbance. The dominant taxa of sandy beach meiofauna are nematodes and harpacticoid copepods; in particular, a change in the community-structure of nematodes can show interesting relations to factors of stress, because they are both abundant and diverse even in habitats which are environmentally stressed.

Taxonomic problems concerning nematodes have previously prevented investigative studies in the Baltic Sea. There are therefore only a few publications concerning nematode community structures for the Baltic and also for the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. I came in October 1999 to work for a year in the Laboratory of Marine Ecology of the University of Crete (Iraklio) to learn about the identification, the systematic and morphology of nematodes, because the possibilities at my home University in Rostock (Baltic Sea, Germany) for studying this taxa are very poor.
During my stay, I was introduced to the topic of Mediterranean meiofauna on a beach in general. This includes the handling of different sampling techniques concerning biotic and abiotic factors, measurement of beach profiles and operating with the samples like separation and differentiation of the taxa at the binocular and determination of the abiotic factors.

Over a period of six months I took samples at two stations in the eulittoral zone of a sandy beach in Kateros (northern Crete) approximately every two weeks. This time of my stay was very useful to me, because all these data and investigations are now subject of my diploma-work, which deals with the spatial and temporal variability of nematodes on Crete, and will be probably finished at the end of June.
Kerstin Rieder

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