Meet the Teacher:

Normand Dubois

The goal of this cruise was to better understand the factors that impact the growth and survival of phytoplankton and how those factors change in various environments, ranging from estuarine to open ocean. Such knowledge is significant in understanding the community composition of phytoplankton.
In this project, we brought together expertise and emerging methods from the fields of bio-optics, population genomics and metabolomics in a coordinated effort to examine what phytoplankton is present and what they are doing. First, we used a suite of DNA fingerprinting techniques to examine biodiversity in the plankton. Second, we applied a range of newly-developed metabolomic and proteomic tools to examine the metabolic capabilities and nutrient status of the phytoplankton. Lastly, bio-optics tools were used to examine how changes in biodiversity and nutrient status affected the optical characteristics of phytoplankton in coastal and open ocean ecosystems.