The effect of nutrient amount on plankton communities. HX_mesocosm

This work studies, once again, the well-studied topic of nutrients and plankton under a different angle; we concentrated on the effect that nutrient amount has on plankton communities. We hypothesize that different nutrient amount will cause effects (blooms) of different magnitude and wanted to further check if this could result in communities’ differentiation to diverse nutrient uptake niches and different species occupying those niches. To our knowledge, this effect has not yet been studied by incorporating novel scientific perspective and current knowledge, therefore there is room for a comprehensive and holistic approach of this issue. We chose to perform mesocosms experimentation as the most representative experimental approach that gives the opportunity to insulate the effect and access the response while at the same time reducing the low-scale experimental errors.