AN EXPERIMENT conducted in a Scottish loch has revealed how a microscopic animal – the main food source for many larger marine species – schedules its day using its own genetic clock.
The ‘body clock’ of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus shapes its metabolic rhythms and movement through the water column.
This, in turn, has an enormous influence on the entire food web in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans where Calanus finmarchicus is a central plankton species.