My research focuses on the interaction among protists and metazoans and how ingested prey are transferred across compartments in the food web. The tools I use and develop to answer these questions have been techniques for in vivo quantifying marine cells using optical instrumentations such as pulse-shape flow cytometry and automated FlowCam plankton analysis (flow through video microscopy). To that end, we are studying the dynamics of pico-sized phytoplankters and the role of mixotrophic ciliates in the outer part of the Baltic Sea.