Arctic copepod lipid markers as a new tool to reconstruct climate-driven ecosystem change

The biodiversity crisis requires effective ecosystem management based on high-resolution data as well as evidence-based modelling. Modern observations are limited in their spatiotemporal coverage. Paleobiology presents a unique opportunity to understand climate-driven shifts in ecosystems across time and space to inform conservation practices in light of anthropogenic climate change. I propose to develop a molecular paleobiological method to reconstruct the abundance of Arctic copepods through time. 

Copepods are zooplankton, thought to make up the largest biomass of any known organism on Earth. In the Arctic, they are critical component of the food web, linking primary producers to higher trophic levels. As such, they play a vital role for the health of high latitude ecosystems as well as the global carbon cycle. The ability to reconstruct Arctic copepod abundances during previous warm periods would without doubt be an enormous step forward in our understanding of climate-driven perturbations to Arctic ecosystems and would help to identify ‘early warning signals’ of regional ecosystem tipping points.