This special issue is associated with session NP6.2 of EGU GA 2022, entitled Turbulence and Plankton: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU22/session/42642. The participants of this session are invited to contribute to the special issue, which is also open to submissions from interested colleagues who did not participate in the session.

Planktonic organisms live in suspension in marine or fresh waters, where they have adapted through the slow process of natural evolution (over hundreds of thousands of generations) to the harsh turbulent currents of their environment. Therefore, contrary to what the meaning of their name marine drifter might lead one to speculate, their dynamics are often different to those of inert bodies passively transported by fluid flows. Indeed, it is known that these organisms have developed many adaptive strategies involving shape and density regulation, swimming activity, aggregation and other mechanisms in order to be sheltered from or to take advantage of turbulent flow features.

Suitable topics for this special issue involving phytoplankton and turbulence include, but are not limited to, bloom inception, thin phytoplankton layer formation, biased motility and migration, nutrient uptake, photosynthesis, and Lagrangian dynamics. Jumps, swimming activity, grazing, contact rates and vertical migration are, among others, appropriate topics concerning the behaviour of zooplankton in turbulent flows. For all planktonic species, adaptive mechanisms in response not only to mechanical but also chemical and electro-magnetic (such as luminous) cues are topics of great interest.

This special issue will welcome manuscripts from marine ecologists, oceanographers, fluid dynamicists, physicists and applied mathematicians. Contributions in the fields of observation, laboratory experiments, numerical models (such as computational fluid dynamics simulations of non-spherical or motile particles) are welcome, involving phytoplankton and/or zooplankton in marine or freshwater environments.