Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology - Eawag

Since spring 2018, the newly developed underwater camera Aquascope has been recording a wide variety of plankton species in Lake Greifen. These sensitive organisms can thus, for the first time, be observed undisturbed in their natural habitat – an important step towards automated monitoring of water quality and aquatic biodiversity.

Thanks to a new instrument, water pollutants can be measured automatically over a period of weeks – directly in the field, rather than in the laboratory. The mobile mass spectrometer is housed in a trailer and can be remotely controlled by smartphone.

If one observes the competition between parasites and symbionts, much can be learned about the theory of evolution. Two Eawag researchers have thus shown in a new study that high parasite diversity promotes symbiont diversity.