Fatty acid profiling of benthic primary producers and associated fauna from an Antarctic system affected by climate change
by Dr. Gabriela L. Campana (Researcher at the Argentinean Antarctic Institute-Prof. at National University of Luján, Argentina)
During my secondment at Ghent University, I worked with Prof. Dr. Marleen De Troch on obtaining fatty acid (FA) profiling of microphytobenthos, macroalgae and their associated fauna from the benthic Antarctic system of Potter Cove (South Shetland Islands, Antarctica).
This part of our work is intended to contribute to one main question of Coastcarb, which involves quantifying the primary production and the energy flow from primary producers to higher trophic levels, and state how these organisms contribute to the coastal fjord carbon budgets.
The detected fatty acids will be applied as a proxy for carbon flow for rocky and soft sediment benthic systems dominated by primary producers (macroalgal forests and microphytobenthos) to unravel functional aspects of this Antarctic ecosystem seriously affected by glacier retreat.
Moreover, during my stay I had the chance to interact with a very interesting (and friendly!) group of local and invited researchers and lab technicians in the Marine Biology research group at UGent, under the guidance of Prof. Dr. De Troch with whom further collaboration is planned.
