Andrea McEvoy
PML Fellow
"I love being able to observe the fascinating world of marine plankton. These tiny organisms form the basis of marine food webs and impact the human communities that depend on these ecosystems. Investigating zooplankton is vital in understanding how to preserve marine habitats and life on our planet. I am extremely lucky to have seen this miniature world on a daily basis and to work for such a great organisation as PML. "
Andrea is a plankton ecologist who worked at PML for almost 40 years before becoming a PML Fellow in April 2025.
She started her career working on the identification of meiofauna particularly nematodes. Research topics included life-history traits, the response to toxicants and the ecological role of meiofauna.
In 2009, Andrea switched discipline to the taxonomy and ecology of zooplankton. This included the generation of long term time series from the Western Channel Observatory (WCO) reference site L4. These plankton observations are sampled at weekly resolution providing an essential resource; producing a baseline, helping to quantify natural variability and providing insights into potential patterns and impacts of climate change.
The zooplankton represents one data set from many parameters measured at the WCO. Recently Andrea worked with the various data producers to bring these pelagic, benthic and atmospheric observations together for the first time in an integrated format.
McEvoy AJ, Atkinson A, Airs RL, Brittain R, Brown I, Fileman ES…. Widdicombe S. (2023) The Western Channel Observatory: a century of physical, chemical and biological data compiled from pelagic and benthic habitats in the Western English Channel. Earth System Science Data 15, 5701–5737 https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5701-2023