PLANT AND ALGAL ECOPHYSIOLOGY LAB

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Intertidal macroalgal nutrient ecology

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- inorganic nitrogen uptake, assimilation and partitioning…

The initial part of this research was carried out in the beautiful Strangford Lough, from the Portaferry Marine Lab, Northern Ireland, in collaboration with Matt Dring and John Berges, funded by NERC UK. Lake Michigan is sadly devoid of the large intertidal brown algae Laminaria and Fucus species (although we did find the phaeophyte Pleurocladia lacustris epiphytic on Cladophora). The plan is to continue examining nitrate uptake and assimilation in intertidal brown macroalgae on the North American Atlantic coast and with Pacific species, but with all the fun stuff going on in the lakes, it may take some time to get there!

Nutrient uptake processes and enzymic indicies of assimilation can also be studied in the somewhat less charismatic filamentous algae found in freshwater ecosystems (e.g. see other research interests on Cladophora).

Intertidal assemblage of brown macroalgae including Laminaria digitata at low tide

Laminaria digitata, Fucus vesiculosus, F. serratus

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