by Helen Hill for CBIOMES
A warm welcome to Stephanie Anderson who recently joined MIT CBIOMES to work with Stephanie Dutkiewicz.
Stephanie is interested in phytoplankton ecology and the abiotic factors that shape microbial communities. Using trait-based approaches, she investigates the role of environmental variables, such as temperature, in driving phytoplankton physiology, community structure, and biogeography. With this research, she aims to improve our mechanistic understanding of phytoplankton community structure and our predictive capacity to decipher how communities may be altered with environmental change.
Anderson joins Darwin to build on a previous collaboration with Stephanie Dutkiewicz in which they found phytoplankton functional types to exhibit diverse responses to temperature. “We will investigate how these differences could result in changes to phytoplankton community structure with ocean warming,” says Anderson. “Later, we will explore how temperature variability in the ocean may have led to these observed differences in thermal strategies and investigate the potential for thermal traits to evolve in a dynamic ocean.”
Anderson holds a Bachelor’s in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a teaching certification from Loyola Marymount University, and a PhD in Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island
Story image: In her spare time Anderson enjoys spending time with her husband and daughter, going for family runs and bike rides around town, and drawing/painting.
Links
Website | Google Scholar | Researchgate
Recent Publication
Anderson, S.I., Barton, A.D., Clayton, S., and S. Dutkiewicz (2021), Marine phytoplankton functional types exhibit diverse responses to thermal change, Nature Communications, doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-26651-8