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In­ter­na­tional: GAME - Mar­ine Re­search­ers study glob­ally

What is at is­sue:

GAME is in an in­ter­na­tional pro­gramme that com­bines ap­plied re­search with the aca­demic train­ing of young sci­ent­ists. Every year, par­al­lel re­search pro­jects on cur­rent eco­lo­gical is­sues are or­gan­ised at dif­fer­ent loc­a­tions around the world. The re­search work is car­ried out by stu­dents who work to­gether in bi-na­tional pairs and who are su­per­vised by sci­ent­ists from GAME’s part­ner in­sti­tutes. The unique GAME ap­proach provides gen­er­al­iz­able in­sights into ur­gent eco­lo­gical is­sues. At the same time GAME con­nects GEO­MAR to nu­mer­ous part­ner in­sti­tutes world­wide and cre­ates a global net­work for the sus­tain­able ex­change of sci­entific know­ledge. GAME cur­rently co­oper­ates with 35 mar­ine re­search in­sti­tutes in 26 coun­tries. This net­work is grow­ing.

GAME fo­cuses on the coastal re­gions of our planet, as they are of para­mount im­port­ance for hu­man­ity: They store ma­jor food re­sources, provide car­bon di­ox­ide sinks and sta­bil­ise coastal lines. Already, more than 50% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion live close to the sea and this per­cent­age is in­creas­ing con­tinu­ally. For this reason, coastal seas are most af­fected by the ef­fects of global change such as cli­mate warm­ing, sea level rise, spe­cies in­va­sions and in­tense hu­man use. This can have far-reach­ing con­sequences for the ways in which these eco­sys­tems func­tion.

GAME stud­ies the ef­fects of global change on coastal seas. Sev­eral pro­jects, for ex­ample, have stud­ied factors in­flu­en­cing their biod­iversity. GAME is also fo­cus­ing on is­sues in in­va­sion eco­logy and stud­ies the ways in which en­vir­on­mental changes af­fect the in­ter­ac­tion between spe­cies.

GAME of­fers stu­dents of the life sci­ences the op­por­tun­ity to do their MSc pro­jects in the frame of a global study.The prac­tical part of each pro­ject takes place at one of the GAME part­ner in­situtes and these ex­per­i­ments are con­duc­ted by bi-na­tional teams that con­sist of the Ger­man par­ti­cipant and a stu­dent of the host­ing in­sti­tute. Pro­ject pre­par­a­tion and the ana­lysis of the global data sets both take place at GEO­MAR in Kiel. The first in­cludes the de­vel­op­ment of the ex­per­i­mental design, lit­er­at­ure re­search on the cur­rent topic and an in­tro­duc­tion to bio­s­tat­ist­ics. The second course ex­pands the lat­ter to more com­plex stat­ist­ical mod­el­ling and adds a com­pre­hens­ive teach­ing mod­ule on com­mu­nic­at­ing sci­ence - in­clud­ing how to de­velop oral present­a­tions and how to write a sci­entific pa­per.

GAME is an in­ter­na­tional stu­dent train­ing and re­search pro­gramme in­ten­ded to fur­ther in­ter­na­tional ex­per­i­ence and co­oper­a­tion among young sci­ent­ists. Dur­ing their pro­ject term, par­ti­cipants ad­dress a mar­ine-eco­lo­gical prob­lem in sim­ul­tan­eous ex­per­i­ments at coastal sites dis­trib­uted widely over the whole globe, most im­port­antly in­clud­ing the south­ern hemi­sphere. After fin­ish­ing prac­tical work, the ex­per­i­ments are eval­u­ated col­lab­or­at­ively in Kiel.

What's hap­pen­ing now:

GAME XVII - Do the effects of microplastic and natural particles of the same size differ?

In 2019, the new pro­ject aims to in­vest­ig­ate whether the ef­fects of mi­cro­scopic plastic particles on mus­sels and other fil­ter or­gan­isms dif­fer fun­da­ment­ally from those of nat­ural particles of sim­ilar size. The ques­tion to be in­vest­ig­ated is whether the small plastic particles have prop­er­ties that ba­sic­ally dis­tin­guish them from nat­ural ma­ter­ial of the same size as, for ex­ample, the shells of di­at­oms. The teams will carry out ex­per­i­ments in which mus­sels are ex­posed to dif­fer­ent con­cen­tra­tions of mi­cro­plastics and nat­ural mi­cro­particles over a longer period of time. Dur­ing the ex­per­i­ments, vari­ous re­sponse vari­ables, such as fil­tra­tion per­form­ance, are col­lec­ted in or­der to de­term­ine the an­im­als' state of health.

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What we have achieved:

2019 - GAME XVII in­vest­ig­ated the ques­tion to what ex­tent nat­ural mi­cro­particles and mi­cro­plastics dif­fer in their ef­fect on fil­ter­ing mar­ine or­gan­isms.

2018 - At 8 loc­a­tions world­wide, teams of stu­dents con­duc­ted ex­per­i­ments to in­vest­ig­ate the ex­tent to which the choice of food and thus the nu­tri­tional com­pos­i­tion of mar­ine herb­i­vores changes with tem­per­at­ure.

2017 - GAME XV deals with the ques­tion of whether rising wa­ter tem­per­at­ures will al­ter the feed­ing be­ha­vior of grazers in mar­ine eco­sys­tems.

2016 - GAME XIV deals with in­ter­act­ive ef­fects of heat stress and mi­cro­plastic ...

2015 - GAME XIII deals with the tol­er­ance of sea anemones to heat stress. In the course of global warm­ing, the av­er­age wa­ter and air tem­per­at­ures world­wide will in­crease and also the tem­per­at­ure peaks dur­ing sum­mer heat waves will be higher.

2014 - GAME XII ad­dresses the ef­fects of mi­cro­plastics on mar­ine or­gan­isms. The sub­ject of mi­cro­plastics is good for mak­ing people aware of the mar­ine eco­sys­tem and mar­ine re­search ...

2013 - GAME XI ad­dresses the im­pact of mi­cro­plastic particles on the stress tol­er­ance of mar­ine de­posit eat­ers. In ad­di­tion to the entry of nu­tri­ents, heavy metals and or­ganic pol­lut­ants, it is mainly plastic waste that has led to massive pol­lu­tion of the oceans by hu­mans in the last 60 years ...

2011 - GAME IX deals with the dis­tri­bu­tion pat­terns of mar­ine spe­cies. Mar­ine areas of vari­ous lat­it­udes dif­fer greatly in terms of the con­stancy with which en­ergy is avail­able for their life pro­cesses in them ...

More in­form­a­tion:

Who has done it

...what is a challenge in the icecold Baltic Sea in March.
GAME team

More in­form­a­tion

Klimasystem
Ocean & cli­mate