Today’s lesson felt like opening the black box of the ocean’s carbon engine, a world where phytoplankton, glycans, and marine fungi quietly shape the fate of carbon across entire ocean basins. We explored a central debate in marine biogeochemistry: Is most carbon...
Today’s lesson really changed how I think about the ocean, not just as water with organisms in it, but as a massive, invisible system where carbon is constantly moving and being transformed. What stood out most is how something as small as phytoplankton connects...
Marine microbes are closely connected to the global carbon cycle. Phytoplankton fix carbon dioxide and convert it into organic matter, including complex glycans. These glycans are then used by specialized microbes, which break them down and help recycle carbon through...
In today’s lesson, we learned how closely marine microbes, phytoplankton, and complex carbohydrates called glycans are connected to the global carbon cycle. Phytoplankton produce organic carbon through photosynthesis, which peaks during seasonal phytoplankton...
Have you ever wondered how ecologists can identify hundreds of species from a single scoop of soil or a bottle of seawater? The answer often lies in metabarcoding. This technique is changing how we study biodiversity, especially in environments where sampling is...
