{"id":58407,"date":"2016-05-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/commencement-2016-uri-graduate-student-studies-feeding-growth-habits-of-microscopic-organisms-in-ocean\/"},"modified":"2016-05-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T00:00:00","slug":"commencement-2016-uri-graduate-student-studies-feeding-growth-habits-of-microscopic-organisms-in-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2016\/05\/commencement-2016-uri-graduate-student-studies-feeding-growth-habits-of-microscopic-organisms-in-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement 2016: 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate student studies feeding, growth habits of microscopic organisms in ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"press-release-import\">\n\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2021\/05\/Anderson-NL1.jpg\" width=\"239\" height=\"270\" align=\"right\"\/>NARRAGANSETT, R.I., May 4, 2016\u2014When people are hungry they look for food, maybe a cheeseburger. But what happens to microorganisms in the ocean when they get hungry? Do they perish, live or grow?<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nSean Anderson, a 24-year-old student at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography, answered those questions researching the feeding habits of heterotrophic protists\u2014microscopic ocean plankton that make our planet habitable.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nIn May, he\u2019ll graduate with a master\u2019s degree in oceanography, but now he\u2019s buckled down in his office on the Narragansett campus writing his thesis, \u201cGrowth, Grazing and Starvation Survival in Three Heterotrophic Dinoflagellate Species.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nWorking with professor Susanne Menden-Deuer in her lab at GSO, he says, have been challenging and rewarding. \u201cI finished my thesis two weeks ago and plan to defend it April 14,\u201d he says, gleefully. \u201cIt\u2019s been a fantastic two years being able to get lab and field experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5Y-_2Up4H5Y\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nGrowing up in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, a small town outside of Portland, he cultivated an interest in the ocean as a kid catching crabs near his house. He studied biology at Old Dominion University in Virginia, then worked as an intern at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine, where he \u201cfell in love\u201d with plankton, including heterotrophs.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\u201cIt blew my mind,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re so small, yet so important.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nFrom there, he joined GSO to work with Menden-Deuer, an internationally renowned researcher on plankton ecology. He had the trip of a lifetime his first semester when he went on a research expedition to Antarctica to study the eating habits of krill.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n \u201cIt was amazing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was unlike anything I\u2019d ever seen before\u2014giant glaciers, mountains, penguins. The air was incredibly clean. You could see for miles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nAt GSO he focused on the \u201cpredator-prey relationship\u201d between heterotrophs and their food source\u2014phytoplankton.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nHeterotrophs, he explains, eat phytoplankton. In turn, heterotrophs are eaten by larger marine life, such as copepods and fish, making them a critical link in the marine food web. Also, heterotrophs are dependent on phytoplankton to reproduce.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nBut what happens when phytoplankton are in short supply? Anderson says the heterotrophs can face long periods of starvation, especially in the winter when there are fewer phytoplankton. He examined how long the organisms could go without food, and how long it took them to resume feeding once phytoplankton were found again.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nIn the GSO lab, he grew cultures of heterotrophs, feeding some and starving others. Then he measured their growth and eating rates.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nHere\u2019s what he found: Heterotrophs, indeed, can live for two or three months without eating. After starvation they can rapidly ingest phytoplankton, but do not reproduce as quickly. That delay in reproduction could impact the ocean\u2019s food web because it allows the phytoplankton to grow unimpeded.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\u201cAny shifts in the balance between predator and prey in the ocean ecosystem are crucial for scientists to study,\u201d says Anderson. \u201cMy results are also important for projecting plankton feeding and growth down the road, especially in the face of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nAfter graduation, Anderson will continue to work in Menden-Deuer\u2019s lab and prepare his research for publication. Science, he says, will always be in his life. <\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\u201cI never thought I\u2019d be so captivated by things I can\u2019t see with the naked eye,\u201d he says. \u201cI even have dreams about plankton. It\u2019s truly become my obsession.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nPhoto by Nora Lewis<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NARRAGANSETT, R.I., May 4, 2016\u2014When people are hungry they look for food, maybe a cheeseburger. But what happens to microorganisms in the ocean when they get hungry? Do they perish, live or grow? &#13; Sean Anderson, a 24-year-old student at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography, answered those questions researching the feeding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}