''The Ultimate Breakdown Beneath the Surface'' - Alma Madita Sommer's master thesis defended

We are excited to share that our early-career colleague Alma Madita Sommer successfully defended her master’s thesis, "The Ultimate Breakdown Beneath the Surface - Zooplankton Influence on C, N and P Degradation in Diatom Aggregates", earlier this July at Lund University.

Alma was investigating the degradation of aggregates made by two algae species (Skeletonema marinoi and Chaetoceros affinis) with and without the presence of copepods by measuring their carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus content over a two-week period. She further measured their sinking speed by making video recordings. In the end, she used the data in a model to illustrate the global export of carbon in the ocean. 

Alma's work was part of BioEcoOcean's Pelagic Ocean Living Lab 2 (Zooplankton & Carbon), which focuses on advancing our capacity to understand and model the role of zooplankton in ocean carbon sequestration.

Her research was supervised by Andre Visser and Marja Koski from our partner organisation DTU Aqua.

Please read the thesis summary below.