Results from experiments and investigations on the kelp crab Taliepus dentatus

Studies of thermal tolerance in marine ectotherms are key in understanding climate effects on ecosystems; however, tolerance of their larval stages has rarely been analyzed. Larval stages are expected to be particularly sensitive. Thermal stress may affect their potential for dispersal and zoogeographical distribution. A mismatch between oxygen demand and the limited capacity of oxygen supply to tissues has been hypothesized to be the first mechanism restricting survival at thermal extremes. Therefore, thermal tolerance of stage zoea I larvae was examined in two populations of the Chilean kelp crab Taliepus dentatus, which are separated by latitude and the thermal regime. We measured temperature-dependent activity, oxygen consumption, cardiac performance, body mass and the carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) composition in order to: (1) examine thermal effects from organismal to cellular levels, and (2) compare the thermal tolerance of larvae from two environmental temperature regimes. We found that larval performance is affected at thermal extremes indicated by decreases in activity, mainly in maxilliped beat rates, followed by decreases in oxygen consumption rates. Cardiac stroke volume was almost temperature-independent. Through changes in heart rate, cardiac output supported oxygen demand within the thermal window whereas at low and high temperature extremes heart rate declined. The comparison between southern and central populations suggests the adaptation of southern larvae to a colder temperature regime, with higher cardiac outputs due to increased cardiac stroke volumes, larger body sizes but similar body composition as indicated by similar C:N ratios. This limited but clear differentiation of thermal windows between populations allows the species to widen its biogeographical range.

Der Pegel steigt - Studentisches Medienprojekt zur Internationalen REKLIM Konferenz in Kooperation mit der DEKRA-Hochschule Berlin, Links zum Viralfilm in unterschiedlichen Auflösungen

Der Pegel steigt: Zeit, die Angel auszuwerfen - oder etwas zu unternehmen! Trockener Humor gegen den Meerespiegelanstieg: mehr als 45 % der globalen Weltbevölkerung leben in Küstengebieten. Durch den Klimawandel wird der Meeresspiegel steigen, mit ungewissen Konsequenzen für die Küstenbevölkerung.

Wächter am Watt - Studentisches Medienprojekt zur Internationalen REKLIM Konferenz in Kooperation mit der DEKRA-Hochschule Berlin, Links zum Dokumentarfilm in unterschiedlichen Auflösungen

In der Nordsee sind vor allem die friesischen Inseln vom Meeresspiegelanstieg betroffen, u.a. auch die ostfriesische Insel Norderney. Welche Herausforderungen kommen durch den ansteigenden Meeresspiegel auf die Insel zu und wie kann man ihnen begegnen? Sind kurzfristige Lösungen überhaupt sinnvoll? Den Menschen vor Ort wird mehr und mehr klar, dass die Konsequenzen des Klimawandels selbst durch aktives Gegensteuern nur verlangsamt, aber nicht mehr aufgehalten werden können. Die heutige Generation wird die Auswirkungen wohl kaum noch erleben doch Entscheidungen, die heute getroffen werden, sind wegweisend für die Zukunft unserer Enkel.

30 years of synoptic observations from Neumayer Station with links to datasets

The analysis of research data plays a key role in data-driven areas of science. Varieties of mixed research data sets exist and scientists aim to derive or validate hypotheses to find undiscovered knowledge. Many analysis techniques identify relations of an entire dataset only. This may level the characteristic behavior of different subgroups in the data. Like automatic subspace clustering, we aim at identifying interesting subgroups and attribute sets. We present a visual-interactive system that supports scientists to explore interesting relations between aggregated bins of multivariate attributes in mixed data sets. The abstraction of data to bins enables the application of statistical dependency tests as the measure of interestingness. An overview matrix view shows all attributes, ranked with respect to the interestingness of bins. Complementary, a node-link view reveals multivariate bin relations by positioning dependent bins close to each other. The system supports information drill-down based on both expert knowledge and algorithmic support. Finally, visual-interactive subset clustering assigns multivariate bin relations to groups. A list-based cluster result representation enables the scientist to communicate multivariate findings at a glance. We demonstrate the applicability of the system with two case studies from the earth observation domain and the prostate cancer research domain. In both cases, the system enabled us to identify the most interesting multivariate bin relations, to validate already published results, and, moreover, to discover unexpected relations.