I am a Professor of the Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, and a microbial ecologist in freshwater and marine environments. In 1994, I started my research career as a researcher at the Lake Biwa Research Institute, the Prefectural institute for conservation of Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan. I conducted several research projects on bloom forming mechanisms of cyanobacteria (Microcystis) in the lake. In 1996, I moved to the Faculty of Agriculture, Ehime University, and focused my research to protistan (protozoan) ecology in freshwater environments, especially in eutrophic lakes. After the establishment of Center for Marine Environmental Studies (CMES), Ehime University in 1999, I moved to CMES and conducted researches on planktonic food web dynamics in a nearby coastal marine system where pearl oyster culture was actively performed. In 2003, I came back to Faculty of Agriculture in the university and conducted researches on food web dynamics in lotic and lentic environments of freshwater and marine systems. In 2008, I moved to the Center for Ecological Research (CER), Kyoto University and have so far been conducting researches on food web dynamics, with special reference to bacterial, algal and protozoan ecology, in lakes, especially Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan. I also have been conducting researches on protistan ecology in Lake Suigetsu, a meromictic lake with a permanent oxycline separating the aerobic freshwater epilimnion from the anaerobic, saline, sulfidogenic hypolimnion. I was awarded as a winner of 17th Biwako Prize for Ecology in 2013.

Publications: please click!⇒ NakanoPubs2025.pdf

Contact: nakano AT ecology.kyoto-u.ac.jp