Contrasting community versus population-based estimates of grazing and virus-induced mortality of phytoplankton
One of the most exciting moments in the Hot Student Paper forum is having the opportunity recognize and celebrate the beginning of a graduate students’ career through the publication of their first lead-author paper. This week we mark one such beginning through the work of current Ph.D. student Michael Staniewski from the Short lab.
Michael’s paper is In Press at Microbial Ecology. In this paper Michael examines the relative roles of grazing and viruses in affecting the mortality of phytoplankton communities as a whole, as well as the mortality of individual phytoplankton populations. Michael shows that the importance of grazing versus viral-induced mortality varies substantially between phytoplankton populations and an integrated suite of techniques are needed to capture a complete picture.
Great work, Michael!