Benthic deep-sea foraminifers provide some of the most important data for climate construction and prediction. For a better understanding of these data and in order to specify their mathematical relationships, Jutta Wollenburg has been dealing with the development of various high-pressure aquaria for the past 15 years. The high-pressure aquaria are needed to simulate deep-sea conditions for a controlled culturing and observation of these high pressure-requiring unicellular organisms. Further topics of interest are benthic foraminifers in extreme environments such as the Arctic Ocean or submarine volcanos as well as the reconstruction of environmental conditions from sediment cores going far back into the past. In addition, she is working on sea-ice formed minerals such as gypsum and ikaite and their importance for the carbon cycle of both poles.
The photos show the accumulation and ingestion of algae under fluorescence excitation in a high-pressure aquarium (above) and experimentally grown foraminifers with shell emitting green-yellow due to fluorescent dye calcein (below) (Source: Wollenburg et al., 2018).
Contact:
Dr. Jutta Wollenburg