Collins Conference Room
Seminar
US Mountain Time
Speaker:
Mick Follows (MIT)
Our campus is closed to the public for this event.
Abstract. We seek to describe and interpret the controls on the functional and taxonomic biogeography of the marine plankton using a combination of simple models, data analysis and numerical simulations. The supply of nitrogen limits productivity over about half the global ocean surface and nitrogen fixing phytoplankton maintain the global ocean nitrogen inventory. I will discuss the cellular scale trade-offs that nitrogen fixing plankton must balance, and a Resource Ratio Theory interpretation of the biogeography of nitrogen fixation in the global ocean.