Loch Ness is the largest body of freshwater in Britain and has been largely ignored by professional scientists because of its association with the mysterious 'monster'.
Loch Ness is an international centre for tourism, yet remains one of the largest unexplored environments in Europe.
Lakes and their bottom dwelling animals are one of the most sensitive
barometers of change in the environment. A large, deep and basically
pristine lake, such as Loch Ness, has particular significance as an
indicator of how our world is changing. Little is known of its
biodiversity, least of all the nematode worms which occur abundantly in
mud at the bottom. These microscopic animals are valuable
environmental monitors because they respond quickly to change. They
occupy all environments from the highest mountains to the deepest
oceans and live - mostly inconspicuously - in sands, soils and sediments, and also as parasites of both plants and animals.
The Natural History Museum's scientists have been taking mud samples from
different sites on the bed of the Loch, to a maximum depth of 214 metres, using a deep water corer. Most of the nematodes are found in the top one centimetre of
sediment. The cores - 41 of them in all - are now undergoing
microscopic analysis in the Museum's laboratories. In just one core, for
example, 274 nematodes of 27 different species were recovered, some of which are new to science (like the one pictured above).
One objective of this project is to identify the worms and study the ecological patterns of this unpolluted European lake so that these patterns can be used to assess the varying degrees of pollution in other lakes.
Illustrations
For further information contact:
Fred Wanless,
The Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 171 938 9432 Fax: +44 (0) 171 938 9158
E-mail: Fred Wanless frw@nhm.ac.uk
