global warming is driving the North Sea ecosystem to the brink of collapse. This warning comes from an analysis of half-a-century of data on the abundance of plankton. Rising temperatures are effecting when these creatures breed; this in turn, is impacting, the food chain.

Martin Edwards and Anthony Richardson of the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science, uk, examined the records of 66 plankton groups. They compared the abundance of different groups with sea temperature changes.

The timings of spring and autumn blooms of diatoms and dinoflagellates