Clio Abbie Marjorie Hall

Research interests

My main research interests are in understanding the response of plankton food webs to environmental change and in the related development of sustainable marine management strategies.

Description of research and teaching

Current research project: Impact of temperature and salinity change on food web interactions in marine plankton communities. Funded by the Onni Talas Foundation.

Current climate change predictions indicate increased levels of warming and declining salinity in the Baltic Sea, with negative implications for plankton food webs, which are an important component for ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services. It is therefore important to understand how these changes may shape the marine environment, to develop improved management strategies that ensure the conservation of marine ecosystems. So far, relatively little is known about the synergistic effect of temperature and salinity from a plankton food web perspective. My PhD aims to address this by investigating the response of trophic interactions within plankton communities (from bacteria to fish larvae) under different scenarios of warming and freshening of the Baltic Sea. 

I am using a combination of mesocosm experiments and in-field measurements to gain insight into the mechanisms underlying changes in natural plankton communities.Specifically, I am investigating (1) how salinity change influences cyanobacteria growth and how this will impact higher trophic levels, (2) how salinity change influences plankton community composition and diversity, and (3) how the combined effect of temperature and salinity change influences food web interactions.