Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo Department of
Integrated Biosciences

Plankton are small organisms floating in water, but its production and metabolism contribute greatly on marine food-web dynamics and biogeochemical cycles such as the production of salmon and tuna, global dynamics of carbon dioxide. They are a diverse set of organisms and form a complex predator-prey network (food web). Small environmental changes can induce large impacts in fish production or biogenic elemental cycles through changes in plankton composition and production. I have been studied the functions of plankton and interactions between marine environment and plankton using various methods such as field observations, incubation experiments, chemical analysis, and numerical models. Our lab members join research cruises in the oceans around the world. Reading papers, computer data analysis and model simulation are important tools for solving our scientific questions, but new hypothesis and discovery are often led by experiencing the beautiful and harsh environment in the oceans and observing plankton that live gracefully and powerfully in the highly viscous fluid of seawater.