On April 2nd the Russian Science Foundation announced the results of six competitions: more than 600 projects received support.
The project “The Role of adaptations to hydrostatic pressure, ultraviolet light and subglacial hyperoxia in the vertical zonation of amphipod communities in lake Baikal”, led by Maxim Timofeev, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Director of ISU Research Institute of Biology of Lake Baikal, became one of the winners in the competition for fundamental scientific research by individual research groups. The project is designed for three years with annual funding of 7 million roubles.
Maxim Timofeev:
Our project is devoted to studying a critically important group of endemic organisms – amphipod crustaceans, the richest group of species in Lake Baikal (more than 350 species), which plays a key role in the lake’s ecosystem. We have been studying amphipods for many years, but until now, their tolerance has been studied mainly in relation to temperature or oxygen deficiency. Now the task is to understand how they are affected by a complex of stress factors associated with depth of habitat: increased pressure at depths or solar ultraviolet light and subglacial hyperoxia near the surface.
For this research, our team’s own inventions will be used: compact transparent pressure chambers and implantable optical microsensors that make it possible to monitor in real time the state of living organisms under pressure and at different levels of oxygen and UV radiation.
Based on the collected experimental data, scientists of ISU Research Institute of Biology of Lake Baikal plan to determine the tolerance limits of different amphipod species, understand what processes underlie the mechanisms of adaptation to environmental stress factors, and how they may be affected by climate change. These data allow not only to better understand Lake Baikal but also to find new solutions for aquaculture, ecotechnologies and biomedicine.
