Workpackage 7: Follow up of cultures in commercial hatcheries will provide 'field' experience and allow the scientific partners to observe the genetic drift in these cultures.

Rotifers will be sampled at different time periods during the mass production of the commercial cycle. The sampling and production of rotifer clones will be performed as described in WP1 and performed on:

• - rotifers from the stock cultures of the commercial partner
• - rotifers obtained at the beginning of the commercial production of mass cultures
• - rotifers obtained at the onset of a crash, or if no crash occurs, at the end of the commercial production (approximately after 6- month culture)

Partners 2 and 3 will perform the genetic characterisation as described in WP1.

After the description of the genetic characteristics of the rotifers at the various locations it will be possible to study the "dynamics" in genetics of various populations based on comparison with the information received from the first sampling campaign.
Based on the information obtained from healthy populations and crashing populations we will be able to confirm whether the success of commercial rotifer cultures could be explained by the maintenance of genetic diversity or not.