PCR from the CPR offers a historical perspective marine population ecology

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey has collected plankton sample s from regular tracks across the world's oceans for almost 70 y. Over 299,0 00 spatially extensive CPR samples are archived and stored in buffered form alin. This CPR archive offers huge potential to study changes in marine com munities using molecular data from a period Mien marine pollution, exploita tion and global anthropogenic impact were much less pronounced. However, to harness the amount of data available within the CPR archive fully, it is n ecessary to improve techniques of larval identification, to genus and speci es preferable, and to obtain genetic information for historical studies of population ecology. To increase the potential of the CPR database this pape r describes the first extraction, amplification by the polymerase chain rea ction and utilization of a DNA sequence (mitochondrial 16S rDNA) from it CP R sample, a formalin fixed larval sandeel.