AboutThe inspiration for this website came from many sources. Inspirations came from teaching a college summer course in biological oceanography at the Chincoteague Bay Field Station (CBFS), researching zooplankton seasonal and spatial patterns in the Mid-Atlantic Bight, finding the Image-Based Key to the Zooplankton of North America by Dr. James F. Haney (University of New Hampshire), learning about citizen science, and working with my Millersville colleague Dr. Chris Hardy who set up Natureatlas.org for the James C. Parks Herbarium at Millersville University. Colleagues Drs. Don Deibel and Patricia Ramey-Balci contributed photographs of their research specimens for the interactive key. Many Millersville undergraduate students helped conduct the zooplankton research by collecting animals on the R/V Parker, sorting and identifying species, giving talks and posters, and analyzing data. Dr. Chris Hardy has made this website a reality with his computer and systematics help. I am truly grateful to all these people. This website is a work in progress. I have tested earlier versions of the interactive key with students in CBFS classes. The ability to do citizen science projects is a new feature which I hope students and interested folks will participate. Much can be learned from just observing a species at a particular time and location. Plankton populations are highly seasonal and greatly influenced by events such as upwelling, warm core rings, and the outflow of estuarine bay waters forming "plumes of low salinity waters" in near-shore areas. More species will be entered into the interactive keys and summaries of citizen science input will be posted. Comments and suggestions are welcome and should be addressed to Julie.ambler@millersville.edu , Dr. Julie Ambler, Department of Biology, Millersville University, P.O. Box 1002, Millersville, PA 17551. Sources of Funding. The Mid-Atlantic zooplankton was collected for a research project supported by NOAA and NASA under award #NA 03NOS4730220, which was managed by Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology, Herndon, Virginia. The statements, findings, and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or the US Department of Commerce. Additional support was provided by Millersville University of Pennsylvania with Faculty Research Grants, Faculty Release Time Grants, and a Sabbatical Leave awarded to Dr. Julie Ambler. Version HistoryVersion 0.90, March 2010 |