Marine Ecosystem Research Programme

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) / Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) - funded Marine Ecosystems Research Programme set out to integrate existing marine data and target new data with current models and knowledge of marine ecosystem services, in order to improve our understanding of the whole UK marine ecosystem.

The 5 year, £5 million programme has brought together more than 50 scientists from 12 research institutes and a large number of supporting organizations that have made data and expertise available to achieve MERP’s aim.

You can find out more about the MERP project from the central project page here...

At QUB Dr. Danny Barrios-O'Neill led the collection of data describing the strength of trophic interactions amongst predators and prey. The focus of his work was to compile a range of functional responses that describe how predators consume prey at different prey densities. This synthesis exercise has led to the compilation of 185 Marine functional responses one of the largest FR data bases compiled to date. Danny also undertook a range of experiments to quantify new functional responses for less well known taxa and carried out some large scale experimental manipulations of disturbance and dispersal in the Queen's University Marine Laboratory mesocosm facility.

You can follow Danny over on twitter @DBarriosONeill