Consortium

Introduction

Overall scientific, financial and administrative co-ordination will be carried out by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KULeuven, B). The senior scientists at the eight institutes participating in the project will be responsible for co-ordinating group research and the activities of the workpackage for which they are responsible (see Workpackage list). The senior scientists are also responsible for exchanging information and adjusting work schedules with the other partners. The selection of model systems (shallow lakes and ponds) in the different geographical regions will be made by the local research groups, but will be co-ordinated by NERI. In the following, a short description of the contribution of the different partners is given.

Partners

Partner 1: Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, KULeuven (Leuven, B)
Responsible for overall project co-ordination, planning of workshops and organization of elaboration of contractual reports. Responsible for workpackages WP7 (assessment of biodiversity in resting egg pools) and WP8 (multivariate data-analysis).

Partner 2: Research group Microbial Ecology, Center for Limnology, NIOO (Nieuwersluis, NL)
Responsible for workpackage WP2, assessing taxon diversity in bacterioplankton.

Partner 3: Section of Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, University of Gent (Gent, B)
Responsible for workpackage WP3, assessing taxon diversity in protists.

Partner 4: Institute of Water Research, University of Granada (Granada, E)
Responsible for workpackage WP4 (assessing taxon diversity in zooplankton).

Partner 5: National Environmental Research Institute (Silkeborg, DK)
Responsible for workpackages WP1 (selection of lakes, standardization of methods and collection of ecological background information) and WP6 (monitoring of fish). Responsible for contact with users in Denmark (water managers in 14 counties) and will contribute to establishing contacts with users abroad, amongst others through established contacts with environmental institutes in other European countries.

Partner 6: J.W. van Goethe University (Frankfurt/Main, D)
Responsible for workpackages WP5 (assessing within-taxon genetic diversity in zooplankton) and WP9 (experimental study of the correlation of biodiversity across trophic levels).

Partner 7: RIVM and RIZA (NL)
Responsible for workpackage WP10 (implementation of data in mathematical model; validation of the model). This partner is also responsible for contact with water managers and the dissemination and implementation of knowledge, indices, standardized grading system, etc. to users, amongst others through the European network initiated by RIZA.

Contribution

The table below gives an overview of the different partners, their main expertise (key words) and their contribution to the different workpackages (bold: responsible partner; between parentheses: minor contribution).

Partner (country code)	Expertise	Contribution to Workpackages
KULeuven (B)	- ecology of zooplankton - ecology of fish - genetics of zooplankton	WP7, WP8 WP1, WP4, WP5, WP6, WP9 (WP10)
KNAW.NIOO.CL (NL)	- genetics of prokaryotes - genetics of protists	WP2 WP1, WP3 (WP8) (WP9)
RUG (B)	- ecology and taxonomy of protists (phytoplankton, nanoflagellates, ciliates) - genetics of prokaryotes and protists	WP3 WP1, WP2, WP8 (WP7) (WP9)
UGR (E)	- ecology of bacterio-plankton and protists - ecology of zooplankton	WP4 WP1, WP3, WP6 (WP7) (WP8)
NERI (DK)	- ecology of protists - ecology of zooplankton - ecology of fish	WP1, WP6 WP3, WP4, WP8 (WP7) (WP9) (WP10)
JWG-BS (D)	- genetics of zooplankton (phylogenetic as well as intraspecific)	WP5, WP9 WP1, WP4, WP8 (WP7)
RIVM/RIZA (NL)	- modelling - lake restoration	WP10 WP1, WP8