Sara Soria just defended her PhD. Sara has worked hard in the last years studying in very different environments how communities are affected by environmental variables across ecological gradients, i.e. progressive changes of biotic and abiotic characteristics in space or time within an ecosystem.

Many ecosystems present remarkable environmental gradients in which the interactions between the microbial communities and the effect these strong abiotic gradients have on them are poorly known. Without this information it is difficult to predict how the structure of microbial community, its functionality and in a greater extent the ecosystem itself, might respond to future environmental changes.

Sara used several techniques including chemical analyses, flow cytometry, labelled carbon experiments and biogeochemical modelling to measure primary production rates, size fractionated plankton distribution, and carbon and nitrogen biogeochemical cycling.

The thesis was supervised by Alfonso Corzo and Sokratis Papaspyrou and was defended in front of internationally renown scientists such as Josep (Pep) Gasol Piqué, Fidel Echevarria Navas and Xosé Anxelu Gutiérrez Morán.

Sara has already published two articles (both in Limnology & Oceanography) and more are on the way. We will keep you posted.

We wish her all the best for the future!