Andrea is a plankton ecologist working within the Marine Ecology and Biodiversity group.
She started her career working on the identification and taxonomy 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 zooplankton identification and ecology. She produces and maintains the long term zooplankton data set plus the Calanus egg production rate time series from the Western Channel Observatory oceanographic time-series and marine biodiversity reference site L4. These time series sampled at weekly resolution are an essential resource, producing a baseline, providing opportunities to investigate interactions between tropic levels, 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. Most recently Andrea has also been working with the various data producers to bring these pelagic, benthic and atmospheric observations together into an integrated format ( https://doi.mba.ac.uk/data/3048 ).