Avijit Talukder
Avijit obtained his BSc in Marine Science in 2013 from the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. He then continued at the same university to obtain a MSc in Marine Science which was completed in 2015.
Avijit joined the Marine Science PhD program at USM in the Spring of 2023.
Disentangling the role of turbulence in regulating ecological interactions underpinning spring accumulations in phytoplankton biomass
The Disturbance Recovery Hypothesis (DHR, Behrenfeld & Boss 2017) represents a paradigm shift in the conceptualization of the processes underlying the phytoplankton annual cycle. For nearly a century, phytoplankton spring blooms have largely been explained in the context of abiotic factors regulating cellular division rates (i.e., mixed‐layer light levels). However, the accumulation of new phytoplankton biomass always represents a mismatch between phytoplankton division (µ) and mortality rates (l). The balance between division and loss, therefore, has important implications for marine food webs and biogeochemical cycles. Yet, broad scale simultaneous measurements of microzooplankton grazing and viral lysis during the spring remain scarce, limiting our ability to understand these nuances of phytoplankton bloom dynamics.
Avijit is analyzing experimental field data obtained from the north Atlantic during the spring of 2021 to test the theory that accelerations and decelerations in phytoplankton division rate arise from abiotic factors (in this case alterations in light) that acts as a form of disturbance influences the balance between division and loss, and ultimately regulated phytoplankton accumulation rates.
This work is in collaboration with Corina Brussaard at the NIOZ.
