Observing microbial processes at the microscale with In Situ technology

Although seawater appears uniform at scales that humans often interact with and sample, the world that marine microbes inhabit can be highly heterogeneous, with numerous biological and physical processes giving rise to resource hotspots where nutrient concentrations exceed background levels by orders of magnitude. While the impact of this microscale heterogeneity has been investigated in the laboratory with microbial isolates and theoretical models, microbial ecologists have lacked adequate tools to interrogate microscale processes directly in the natural environment. Within this thesis I introduce three new technologies that enable interrogation of microbial processes at the microscale in natural marine communities. The IFCB-Sorter acquires images and sorts individual phytoplankton cells, directly from seawater, allowing studies exploring connections between the diversity of forms present in the plankton and genetic variability at the single-cell level.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Joint Program in Applied Ocean Science and Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Lambert, Bennett S.(Bennett Spencer)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Roman Stocker and Heidi Sosik.

• Joint Program in Applied Ocean Science and Engineering.
• Civil and Environmental Engineering.
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122326

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122326