Concepts and Practices in Biological Oceanography and Marine Ecology - Part 2

This course is primarily aimed at students willing to improve their knowledge in diversity and taxonomy of marine organisms. It is a skills-based training course in Mediterranean taxonomy.  In particular, this training course will focus on the taxonomy of representative invertebrates from coralligeneous, posidonia meadows and soft bottoms as well as on Mediterranean fish, plankton and macrophytes. Everyday, there will be lectures on the selected taxa followed by ”hands on” with freshly collected samples during field expeditions. Sampled taxa will be observed under the binocular or optical microscopes at the laboratory and the taxonomic criteria will be applied to identify the organism. Moreover, a lecture session will be given with special insight into biology of studied organisms (functions of respiration, nutrition, reproduction). Then, an observation session of taxa previously collected from the area of Gulf of Lion will exemplify and illustrate morphological details of the group of interest.