HARD-CORE BIOLOGY: One of the sediment cores from which Nina Lundholm pulls slumbering phytoplankton to reanimate and studyMARIANNE ELLEGAARD, UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
After a decade studying microscopic marine life, biologist Nina Lundholm decided in 2011 that it was time to bring back the dead. She had first become fascinated with phytoplankton when she was a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen, and much of her research since then has focused on how their populations respond to short-term ecological changes.
Studying variation between modern species led her to wonder how these tiny organisms changed over longer stretches of time. “Because [marine phytoplankton] make up the basis of the food web, it is important to see how they respond to changes in the environment and the climate,” says Lundholm, who is now an associate professor at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
Marine phytoplankton, which include a diverse ...
