Frawley T.H., D.K. Briscoe, P.C. Daniel, G.L. Britten, L.B. Crowder, C.J. Robinson, W.F. Gilly (2019), Impacts of a transition to tropical oceanic conditions on Gulf of California Jumbo Squid Dosidicus gigas, ICES Journal of Marine Science,doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsz133 Continue reading Impacts of a shift to a warm-water regime in the Gulf of California on jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas)
Category Archives: Diversity and Biogeography
A More Diverse Role for Diatoms
Helen Hill | Darwin Project
A review article involving Stephanie Dutkiewicz and Oliver Jahn suggests the diatoms have more diverse roles in carbon cycling than previously understood. Continue reading A More Diverse Role for Diatoms
What you Can Do With a Really Rather Realistic Ocean Model
Helen Hill | Darwin Project
It’s been a decade since the inception of the MIT Darwin Project, an alliance between physical oceanographers, biogeochemists and marine microbiologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The goal of Darwin remains to couple state of the art physical models of global ocean circulation with biogeochemistry and genome-informed models of microbial processes to understand the interplay between different elements of the marine ecosystem leading to observed balances between physiology and the marine environment. Continue reading What you Can Do With a Really Rather Realistic Ocean Model
Phytoplankton & Chips
Helen Hill | Darwin Project
Microbes mediate the global marine cycles of elements, modulating atmospheric CO2 and helping to maintain the oxygen we all breath yet there is much about them scientists still don’t understand. Now, an award from the Simons Foundation will give researchers from the Darwin Project access to bigger, better computing resources to model these communities and probe how they work. Continue reading Phytoplankton & Chips
Tiny bacterium provides window into whole ecosystems
Ubiquitous marine organism has co-evolved with other microbes, promoting more complex ecosystems. Continue reading Tiny bacterium provides window into whole ecosystems
New study sets oxygen-breathing limit for ocean’s hardiest organisms.
Graduate Student Emily Zakem and advisor Mick Follows find bacteria can survive in marine environments that are almost completely starved of oxygen. Continue reading New study sets oxygen-breathing limit for ocean’s hardiest organisms.
Song, H., J. Marshall, M.J. Follows, S. Dutkiewicz, and G. Forget. Source waters for the highly productive Patagonian shelf in the southwestern Atlantic. Journal of Marine Systems – early online edition.
Keeping Things the Same
The elemental composition of organic matter is remarkably constant throughout the world’s oceans, but phytoplankton are known to take up nutrients and carbon in quite variable ratios depending on light and nutrient conditions.
In a paper published online in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles last month, Darwin Project researchers David Talmy (MIT), Christopher Hill (MIT), Anna Hickman (Univ. of Southampton, England), and Mick Follows (MIT), in a collaboration with Adam Martiny (Univ. of California, Irvine), report on their work seeking to understand what ecosystem factors could cause the elemental composition of organic matter to remain stable and relatively constant (homeostatic), even when the phytoplankton can have quite variable composition. Continue reading Keeping Things the Same
Ocean acidification may cause dramatic changes to phytoplankton
Study led by principal research scientist Stephanie Dutkiewicz finds many species may die out and others may migrate significantly as ocean acidification intensifies. Continue reading Ocean acidification may cause dramatic changes to phytoplankton
Dutkiewicz, S., J.J. Morris, M.J. Follows, J. Scott, O. Levitan, S.T. Dyhrman, and I. Berman-Frank, 2015, Impact of Ocean Acidification on the Structure of Future Phytoplankton Communities. Nature Climate Change, doi: 10.1038/nclimate2722