My work on Antarctic phytoplankton was done at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California as a part of the summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. In this study, we explored the effects that glacial meltwater has on phytoplankton diversity in the Western Antarctic Peninsula and hypothesized that there will be a shift from large to small phytoplankton with more abundance in cryptophytes over diatoms. For this research, I successfully processed 159 18S amplicon DNA sequences, produced nine temperature salinity maps, one large temperature salinity ocean depth graph, and a map of the Antarctic sample locations. Glacial melt was defined as areas with relatively higher temperature and lower salinity. The 18S amplicon sequences and CTD data revealed that cryptophytes bloomed when temperature was lower and salinity was higher which contradicts previous studies. However, cryptophytes prefer the region with fresher water compared to diatoms. This indicates a switch from cryptophytes to diatoms in the future if higher glacial melt persists. This new knowledge provides a better understanding of how climate change and glacial meltwater affect phytoplankton diversity and phenology, as well as give more insight into how the upper trophic levels may respond to these changes. After my fellowship studying this, I continued to work with them remotely to statistically analyze the phytoplankton composition trends from 2017 to 2020 and map their relationship to other environmental variable such as temperature, salinity, chlorophyll, and euphotic depth.
This was one of my first real research experiences outside a classroom. I learned several essential skills from coding and statistical analysis to gaining confidence in presenting my work to the scientific community. I was also able gain experience in the more active aspects of being a researcher such as sampling phytoplankton using a net and viewing the microbial community under a microscope. This experience has overall given me an appreciation for citizen science work and the importance of being able to display your work to, not only the scientific community, but also the general public.
Skilled gained:
- QGIS
- R Studio
- Ocean Data View
- Qiime
- Phytoplankton sampling
- Microscope
- Phytoplankton identification
- Science communication
