Co-Convenors:

Angus Atkinson (British Antarctic Survey, UK)
Carin Ashjian (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA)

Invited Speaker:

Øystein Varpe (Norwegian Polar Institute, Norway)

Polar waters and their marginal seas are characterised by low, fairly stable temperatures, intense variation in solar radiation amplifed by winter ice cover, and high seasonal variation in pelagic primary production. Further, the fastest warming regions on the planet are at high latitudes. These habitats are undergoing dramatic environmental changes such as summer sea ice retreat in the Western Arctic, and are predicted to show the firstsigns of carbonate under-saturation. The extreme polar conditions require adaptations by micro-, meso-, and macro-zooplankton (herein “zooplankton”) including stenothermy, shrinkage, use of sea ice, differing phenologies, seasonal migrations and diet shifts plus pulsed reproduction and slow, strongly seasonal growth. Some of these attributes make polar zooplankton potentially sensitive even to small changes in temperature, sea ice extent, seasonality and the timing of food. Polar ecosystems also can provide glimpses into the future of climate change. They provide a natural test-bed to examine both the sensitivity (e.g. physiological limits) and the resilience (e.g. behavioural flexibility)of zooplankton. In this session we welcome studies from high latitudes of both hemispheres, examining the response of zooplankton to spatial and temporal environmental variability and change. We welcome also broader scale comparative contributions (of species, regions or hemispheres), especially those that explore the mechanisms of sensitivity or resilience.