Ecotron Ile-de-France
Introduction
Ecotron Ile-de-France is an internationally ambitious system that allows small organisms and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to be confined and manipulated under highly controlled conditions in order to measure their functioning and sensitivity to climate change.
Proposed services
- Custom experimental services in enclosed environment;
- Analytical services;
Detailed service offer
- Aquatic and terrestrial microcosms for the study of isolated ecosystems and populations;
- A highly controlled and instrumented environmental chamber (Ecolab);
- State-of-the-art instrumentation for microbiological and bio-geochemical studies on site or in the context of external projects.
Platforms
Aquatic and terrestrial microcosms
Aquatic microcosms are small containers dedicated to studies of aquatic microbial ecosystems from isolated populations to communities of bacteria, microalgae and other planktonic organisms. Currently, dedicated laboratories contain 13 simple chemostats for the culture of bacteria and phytoplankton under sterile conditions and 4 double chemostats (twin system composed of two simple chemostats) dedicated to the study of interactions between phytoplankton and zooplankton.
Ecolab
This service is based on the principle of a highly controlled environmental chamber (temperature, humidity, light, rainfall and atmospheric gas composition) and instrumented (material and energy flow measurements, study of the biology of organisms or communities and monitoring the atmospheric composition) to confine mesocosms (1-2m3) for the study of natural or artificial communities, terrestrial or aquatic.
Instrumentation
Ecotron Ile-De-France provides an access to a full range of instruments dedicated to water microbiology and bio-geochemistry that can be used for on-site research projects as well as for external research projects. The analytical laboratory currently includes a flow cytometer for microbial community and algae analysis, a compact titrator for alkalinity measurements, a dual beam spectrophotometer and a continuous segmented flow analyzer for accurate salt analysis. nutritious in the water samples.
