"Microeukaryote Physiology and Molecular Ecology Across the North Atlantic Ocean"
Talk Summary: “Microeukaryotes are key components of the biological carbon pump, contributing to primary production, carbon remineralization, and fueling marine food webs. Their growth and behavior are dependent on a complex suite of environmental conditions, with ecological roles not well understood across large expanses of the ocean. Key unknowns remain regarding how resource availability shapes their physiology and activity. In this talk, I will share results describing microeukaryote ecology across three distinct study regions, beginning in nearshore coastal Georgia and extending into the Southern Ocean. Studies discussed will include tracking harmful algal blooms in a coastal estuary, optimizing methods for tracking mixotrophy in continental shelf ecosystems, characterizing the metal metabolism of Southern Ocean diatoms, and examining microeukaryote diversity using metaproteomics.”
Dr. Natalie Cohen is a microbial ecologist interested in how microeukaryotes interact with their geochemical environment. She received her B.S. in Biology from Penn State University, where she completed a thesis on freshwater diatom ecology, and her Ph.D. from UNC Chapel Hill, focusing on the molecular physiology of marine diatoms. She was awarded a Simons Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to study phytoplankton metabolism using meta-omics and trace metal distributions at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Natalie is a recipient of the 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship and the 2024 Simons Foundation Early Career Investigator in Aquatic Microbial Ecology Award. She is currently in her fifth year as an Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.
Coffee and snacks provided!