Please join me in congratulating Cathy for receiving a NASA graduate fellowship for her project:

"Global Distributional Patterns of Phytoplankton Communities and Their Elemental Stoichiometry Using MODIS Satellite Data"

Great job...

Adam

UCI introduces ocean research and education initiative
 
Multidisciplinary effort aims to engage public in local marine and coastal issues
 
Irvine, Calif., March 24, 2015 – UC Irvine is set to embark on one of its boldest experiments yet: a brand-new research and education initiative called UCI OCEANS (Oceans, Changing Environments, Arts and Nearshore Societies).
 

Caroline Turner from the Lenski lab group at MSU will be giving a seminar on 1/5 at 2 pm in CH1103. The title of her talk is:
"Long-term experimental evolution and ecological consequences"

Adam

Irvine, Calif., & East Boothbay, Maine, Nov. 24, 2014 — Single-cell phytoplankton in the ocean are responsible for roughly half of global oxygen production, despite vast tracks of the open ocean that are devoid of life-sustaining nutrients. While phytoplankton’s ability to adjust their physiology to exploit limited nutrients in the open ocean has been well documented, little is understood about how variations in microbial biodiversity – the number and composition of marine microbes – affects global ocean function.

One of the fundamental patterns of ocean biogeochemistry is the Redfield ratio that links the elemental stoichiometry of surface plankton with the chemistry of the deep ocean. There is no obvious mechanism for the globally consistent C:N:P ratio of 106:16:1 (i.e. Redfield ratio) especially as there is substantial elemental variation among plankton communities in different ocean regions. Thus, knowing how biodiversity regulates the elemental composition of the ocean is important for our understanding of the ocean and climate as a whole – now and in the future.

A big welcome to Allison Moreno and Catherine Garcia who just joined the lab as graduate students. Alli graduated in May from Cal State Monterey Bay and has received a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Cathy was lab manager in Jed Fuhrman's lab at USC since her graduation from Northeastern University in 2011.