Curtis A. Suttle is a Canadian microbiologist and oceanographer who is a faculty member at the University of British Columbia. Suttle is a Distinguished University Professor [1] who holds appointments in Earth & Ocean Sciences, [2] Botany, [3] Microbiology & Immunology [4] and the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries [5] and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. On 29 December, 2021 he was named to the Order of Canada. [6] His research is focused on the ecology of viruses in marine systems as well as other natural environments.
Suttle completed both his bachelor's and doctoral degrees at the University of British Columbia.[ citation needed ] He worked in several positions at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1987 to 1988 before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin's Marine Science Institute. In 1996, he returned to the University of British Columbia as a tenure-line faculty member, where he currently holds the rank of Professor and Distinguished University Scholar. Suttle was the Associate Dean for Research of the Faculty of Science from 2001 to 2013. [4]
Suttle completed his doctoral studies under the guidance of Paul J. Harrison. [7] Suttle's research focused on nitrogen [8] and phosphorus [9] as well as grazing effects on freshwater phytoplankton. [10] He published his first paper on viruses in marine systems in 1990 – the paper was co-authored by Amy Chan and then graduate student Matt Cottrell and focused on the lysis of eukaryotic phytoplankton. Since then, he has published numerous paper on viruses infecting bacteria, phytoplankton and invertebrate grazers. In 1999, he co-authored the first paper to describe the viral shunt with his former postdoctoral fellow Steven Wilhelm. This work was awarded the John H Martin Award from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) in 2021, in recognition for the paper establishing the importance of viruses in biogeochemical cycles. Along with this work, he has contributed high-profile publications in the journals Nature , [11] Science , [12] and Nature Reviews Microbiology . [13] From his publications, Suttle has an Erdős number of 3 (having published with Eugene Koonin).
Suttle's interests continue to focus on viruses, and include the continued development of biomolecular tools to study virus diversity and function in natural systems. [13] His lab (work led by graduate student Matthias Fisher) was the first to describe the Cafeteria roenbergensis virus .[ citation needed ] In 2019 his research team uncovered a series of viruses in endangered Pacific salmon populations. [14]
Suttle received NSERC undergraduate (1982–1984) and postdoctoral (1988) awards as part of his training.[ citation needed ] He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2008, [15] appointed to The Order of Canada in 2021, [16] received the A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in Marine Science in 2010, [17] the Timothy R Parson Medal for Excellence in Ocean Sciences in 2011, and the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award for excellence in limnology or oceanography.[ citation needed ] He was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2014, and named a sustaining Fellow of ASLO in 2016.[ citation needed ] In 2004, he was given the Teaching Award in Environmental Earth Sciences from the University of British Columbia Department of Earth & Ocean Sciences.[ citation needed ]
Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms that drift in water but are unable to actively propel themselves against currents. The individual organisms constituting plankton are called plankters. In the ocean, they provide a crucial source of food to many small and large aquatic organisms, such as bivalves, fish, and baleen whales.
Coccoliths are individual plates or scales of calcium carbonate formed by coccolithophores and cover the cell surface arranged in the form of a spherical shell, called a coccosphere.
Sallie Watson "Penny" Chisholm is an American biological oceanographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an expert in the ecology and evolution of ocean microbes. Her research focuses particularly on the most abundant marine phytoplankton, Prochlorococcus, that she discovered in the 1980s with Rob Olson and other collaborators. She has a TED talk about their discovery and importance called "The tiny creature that secretly powers the planet".
Diel vertical migration (DVM), also known as diurnal vertical migration, is a pattern of movement used by some organisms, such as copepods, living in the ocean and in lakes. The adjective "diel" comes from Latin: diēs, lit. 'day', and refers to a 24-hour period. The migration occurs when organisms move up to the uppermost layer of the water at night and return to the bottom of the daylight zone of the oceans or to the dense, bottom layer of lakes during the day. DVM is important to the functioning of deep-sea food webs and the biologically-driven sequestration of carbon.
The microbial food web refers to the combined trophic interactions among microbes in aquatic environments. These microbes include viruses, bacteria, algae, heterotrophic protists. In aquatic ecosystems, microbial food webs are essential because they form the basis for the cycling of nutrients and energy. These webs are vital to the stability and production of ecosystems in a variety of aquatic environments, including lakes, rivers, and oceans. By converting dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and other nutrients into biomass that larger organisms may eat, microbial food webs maintain higher trophic levels. Thus, these webs are crucial for energy flow and nutrient cycling in both freshwater and marine ecosystems.
The sea surface microlayer (SML) is the boundary interface between the atmosphere and ocean, covering about 70% of Earth's surface. With an operationally defined thickness between 1 and 1,000 μm (1.0 mm), the SML has physicochemical and biological properties that are measurably distinct from underlying waters. Recent studies now indicate that the SML covers the ocean to a significant extent, and evidence shows that it is an aggregate-enriched biofilm environment with distinct microbial communities. Because of its unique position at the air-sea interface, the SML is central to a range of global marine biogeochemical and climate-related processes.
Farooq Azam is a researcher in the field of marine microbiology. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California San Diego. Farooq Azam grew up in Lahore and received his early education in Lahore. He attended University of Punjab, where he received his B.Sc. in chemistry. He later he received his M.Sc. from the same institution. He then went to Czechoslovakia for higher studies. He received his PhD in microbiology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After he received his PhD, Farooq Azam moved to California. Azam was the lead author on the paper which coined the term microbial loop. This 1983 paper involved a synthesis between a number of leaders in the (then) young field of microbial ecology, specifically, Azam, Tom Fenchel, J Field, J Gray, L Meyer-Reil and Tron Frede Thingstad.
The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey is one of the longest running marine biological monitoring programmes in the world. Started in 1931 by Sir Alister Hardy and Sir Cyril Lucas, the Survey provides marine scientists and policy-makers with measures of plankton communities, coupled with ocean physical, biological and chemical observations, on a pan-oceanic scale. The Survey is a globally recognised leader on the impacts of environmental change on the health of our oceans.
Oxyrrhis is a genus of heterotrophic dinoflagellate, the only genus in the family Oxyrrhinaceae. It inhabits a range of marine environments worldwide and is important in the food web dynamics of these ecosystems. It has the potential to be considered a model organism for the study of other protists. Oxyrrhis is an early-branching lineage and has long been described in literature as a monospecific genus, containing only Oxyrrhis marina. Some recent molecular phylogenetic studies argue that Oxyrrhis comprises O. marina and O. maritima as distinct species, while other publications state that the two are genetically diverse lineages of the same species. The genus has previously been suggested to contain O. parasitica as a separate species, however the current consensus appears to exclude this, with Oxyrrhis being monospecific and containing O. marina and O. maritima as separate lineages of the type species. The genus is characterised by its elongated body which is anteriorly prolonged to a point, its complex flagellar apparatuses which attach to the ventral side of the cell, and the unique features of its nucleus.
Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine environment, that is, in the saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism is any microscopic living organism or virus, which is invisibly small to the unaided human eye without magnification. Microorganisms are very diverse. They can be single-celled or multicellular and include bacteria, archaea, viruses, and most protozoa, as well as some fungi, algae, and animals, such as rotifers and copepods. Many macroscopic animals and plants have microscopic juvenile stages. Some microbiologists also classify viruses as microorganisms, but others consider these as non-living.
Alan Reece Longhurst was a British-born Canadian oceanographer who invented the Longhurst-Hardy Plankton Recorder, and is widely known for his contributions to the primary scientific literature, together with his numerous monographs, most notably the "Ecological Geography of the Sea". He led an effort that produced the first estimate of global primary production in the oceans using satellite imagery, and also quantified vertical carbon flux through the planktonic ecosystem via the biological pump. In later life he offered several critical reviews of several aspects of fishery management science and climate change science.
The UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) is a research unit at the University of British Columbia (UBC) that was formed in 2015 by incorporating members from the former UBC Fisheries Centre, as well as a subset of researchers that are conducting marine related research at UBC. The IOF developed its own graduate program, which welcomed its first cohort of graduate students in September 2019. In addition to students of its OCF program, members are also drawn from other graduate programs at UBC, primarily from the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, the Departments of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Zoology, Geography, and Botany, and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. The UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries brings together a community of Canadian and international experts in ocean and freshwater species, systems, economics, and issues to provide new insights into how global marine systems function, and the impacts of human activity on those systems. It is working towards a world in which the oceans are healthy and their resources are used sustainably and equitably. IOF is located at The University of British Columbia, and promotes multidisciplinary study of aquatic ecosystems and broad-based collaboration with researchers, educators, maritime communities, government, NGOs, and other partners.
The viral shunt is a mechanism that prevents marine microbial particulate organic matter (POM) from migrating up trophic levels by recycling them into dissolved organic matter (DOM), which can be readily taken up by microorganisms. The DOM recycled by the viral shunt pathway is comparable to the amount generated by the other main sources of marine DOM.
William Li is a Canadian biological oceanographer who did research on marine picoplankton, marine macroecology, ocean surveys of plankton from measurements of flow cytometry, and detection of multi-annual ecological change in marine phytoplankton.
A marine food web is a food web of marine life. At the base of the ocean food web are single-celled algae and other plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton. The second trophic level is occupied by zooplankton which feed off the phytoplankton. Higher order consumers complete the web. There has been increasing recognition in recent years that marine microorganisms.
Marine viruses are defined by their habitat as viruses that are found in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Viruses are small infectious agents that can only replicate inside the living cells of a host organism, because they need the replication machinery of the host to do so. They can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.
Trevor Charles Platt was a British and Canadian biological oceanographer who was distinguished for his fundamental contributions to quantifying primary production by phytoplankton at various scales of space and time in the ocean.
Roxane Maranger is a professor at Université de Montréal and Canada Research Chair Tier I in Aquatic Ecosystem Science and Sustainability known for her research on the impact of humans on water quality in lakes. From July 2020 - July 2022, she served as the president of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO).
Susanne Menden-Deuer is an oceanographer and marine scientist known for her work on marine food webs, including their structure and function. As of 2022, she is president-elect of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.
Patricia Ana Matrai is a marine scientist known for her work on the cycling of sulfur. She is a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.