Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T17:01:19.583Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2001

R.R. Kirby
Affiliation:
Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Citadel Hill, The Hoe, Plymouth, PL1 2PB, UK, E-mail: r.kirby@pml.ac.uk
P.C. Reid
Affiliation:
The Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science, 1 Walker Terrace, The Hoe, Plymouth, PL1 3BN, UK

Abstract

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.

Type
Short Communication
Copyright
2001 Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)