High Content Microscope (automated)

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The phenotyping unit with a high-content imaging system is specifically designed for the high-through put measurement of a suit of phenotypic traits in auto-photosynthetic plankton organisms and their interacting species such as rotifers, protists and viruses, as well as heterotrophic protists. This opens up completely novel possibilities for describing and mechanistically investigating the interactions within aquatic plankton and microbial communities. Specifically, the set-up of the phenotyping unit allows measuring traits of hundreds of individual genotypes and replicates simultaneously and several traits. The proposed phenotyping unit is indispensable for our work on the mechanistic understanding of the ecological and evolutionary changes within communities, specifically for the detection of changes in trait variation and covariation over time, which requires the concurrent recording of several traits of individual cells or individual animals. The high throughput of phenotyping unit allows the characterization of traits of different interacting species be recorded in a statistically robust manner. Such a phenotyping unit is not available at the University of Constance.