PCR from the CPR offers a historical perspective on marine population ecology.

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey has collected plankton samples from regular tracks across the world's oceans for almost 70 y. Over 299,000 spatially extensive CPR samples are archived and stored in buffered formalin. This CPR archive offers huge potential to study changes in marine communities using molecular data from a period when marine pollution, exploitation and global anthropogenic impact were much less pronounced. However, to harness the amount of data available within the CPR archive fully, it is necessary to improve techniques of larval identification, to genus and species preferably, and to obtain genetic information for historical studies of population ecology. To increase the potential of the CPR database this paper describes the first extraction, amplification by the polymerase chain reaction and utilization of a DNA sequence (mitochondrial 16S rDNA) from a CPR sample, a formalin fixed larval sandeel.

Continuous Plankton Recorder Database: evolution, current uses and future directions.

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey, operated by the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS), is the largest plankton monitoring programme in the world and has spanned >70 yr. The dataset contains information from ~200 000 samples, with over 2.3 million records of individual taxa. Here we outline the evolution of the CPR database through changes in technology, and how this has increased data access. Recent high-impact publications and the expanded role of CPR data in marine management demonstrate the usefulness of the dataset. We argue that solely supplying data to the research community is not sufficient in the current research climate; to promote wider use, additional tools need to be developed to provide visual representation and summary statistics. We outline 2 software visualisation tools, SAHFOS WinCPR and the digital CPR Atlas, which provide access to CPR data for both researchers and non-plankton specialists. We also describe future directions of the database, data policy and the development of visualisation tools. We believe that the approach at SAHFOS to increase data accessibility and provide new visualisation tools has enhanced awareness of the data and led to the financial security of the organisation; it also provides a good model of how long-term monitoring programmes can evolve to help secure their future.

Digestion of natural food by larval and post-larval turbot Scophthalmus maximus

The digestion of natural, mainly crustacean zooplankton, by different age groups of turbot Scophthalmus maximus larvae was evaluated by comparisons of visual appearance, dry weight and carbon and nitrogen content of fresh food organisms with material recovered from faeces. Visually, the degree of digestion of food particles ranged from no discernible change of lamellibranch larvae, copepod eggs, intact copepod faecal pellets and some phytoplankton species, to varying degrees of removal of body constituents in copepods, cladocerans and decapod zoea. For crustaceans, the proportion of body constituents removed was related to the size and construction of their apparently indigestible exoskeleton. Uppon defaecation larger organisms showed the greatest percentage loss in dry weight and carbon. A high percentage of nitrogen was extracted from all organisms.