About the presentation: Phytoplankton are key primary producers performing half of Earth’s carbon fixation, forming the base of aquatic food webs, driving major biogeochemical cycles and affecting water quality. Understanding how phytoplankton respond to changing environmental conditions, including global climate change, is critical for our ability to predict the fate and functioning of aquatic ecosystems. I will present examples of how we can use trait-based approaches to improve our mechanistic understanding of phytoplankton community reorganization under different conditions, including the occurrence and proliferation of harmful algal blooms.

About the speaker: Elena Litchman is an MSU Research Foundation Professor at Michigan State University. She studies the responses of aquatic ecosystems to changing environments, including anthropogenic global change, and the consequences of those changes for biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, and ecosystem functioning. She focuses on microbial communities and conducts research in a wide range of systems, from lakes in the US and Siberia to the global ocean and experimental phytoplankton communities. She combines experiments, field studies and mathematical models to address ecological questions of fundamental and applied significance.