Emily F Brownlee

• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Protist plankton can be divided into three main groups: phytoplankton, zooplankton, and mixoplankton. In situ methods for studying phytoplankton and zooplankton are relatively straightforward since they generally target chlorophyll/photosynthesis or grazing activity, while the integration of both processes within a single cell makes mixoplankton in...

Phago-mixotrophy, the combination of photoautotrophy and phagotrophy in mixoplankton, organisms that can combine both trophic strategies, have gained increasing attention over the past decade. It is now recognized that a substantial number of protistan plankton species engage in phago-mixotrophy to obtain nutrients for growth and reproduction under...

Cryptophyte algae are globally distributed photosynthetic flagellates found in freshwater, estuarine, and neritic ecosystems. While cryptophytes can be highly abundant and are consumed by a wide variety of protistan predators, few studies have sought to quantify in situ grazing rates on their populations. Here we show that autumnal grazing rates on...

Protists play important roles in grazing and nutrient recycling, but quantifying these roles has been hindered by difficulties in collecting, culturing, and observing these often-delicate cells. During long-term deployments at the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO) (Massachusetts, USA), Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) made it possible to study...

Protozoa play important roles in grazing and nutrient recycling, but quantifying these roles has been hindered by difficulties in collecting, culturing, and observing these often-delicate cells. During long-term deployments at the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory (Massachusetts, USA), Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) has been shown to be useful for...

One of the most dramatic large-scale features in the ocean is the seasonal greening of the North Atlantic in spring and summer due to the accumulation of phytoplankton biomass in the surface layer. In 1953, Harald Ulrik Sverdrup hypothesized a now canonical mechanism for the development and timing of phytoplankton blooms in the North Atlantic. Over...

Phytoplankton blooms over Arctic Ocean continental shelves are thought to be restricted to waters free of sea ice. Here, we document a massive phytoplankton bloom beneath fully consolidated pack ice far from the ice edge in the Chukchi Sea, where light transmission has increased in recent decades because of thinning ice cover and proliferation of m...

In the last several decades, the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) fishery in Chesapeake Bay has collapsed, largely because of overfishing and disease. As a consequence, there is increasing interest in the introduction of the Suminoe oyster Crassostrea ariakensis, which initial experiments suggest grows more rapidly and is more disease toleran...

The Eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica and the Asian oyster C. ariakensis are native and introduced oysters, respectively, in the Chesapeake Bay and the northern quahog (hard clam) Mercenaria mercenaria, common to sandy habitats of the Bay and adjacent coastal Bays, is a major cultured species in Virginia waters. Each species will be exposed to t...

The cosmopolitan dinoflagellate Prorocentrum minimum is a recurrent bloom forming species in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, generally observed at its highest levels in late spring and summer. Laboratory studies were conducted to assess potential bloom impacts on diel oxygen concentrations in shallow littoral zones as well as settlement suc...

Algal blooms are becoming increasingly common within the Chesapeake Bay. Nutrients entering the Bay, combined with optimal physical conditions and light, temperature and rainfall, contribute to the formation of these blooms. Certain types of phytoplankton (eukaryotic algae and cyanobacteria) in these accumulations cause problems in local waters, in...

A short-term laboratory study was conductedto investigate the effect of barley strawin controlling several common phytoplanktonand cyanobacterial species. Following aone-month incubation of barley straw incoarsely filtered fresh Potomac River andbrackish Patuxent River waters, the growthof six autotrophic taxa was followed inculture. Barley straw s...

With the decline of the native oyster, Crassostrea virginica, in the Chesapeake Bay due to disease, over-harvesting, and loss of habitat, ways to increase oyster production are of great interest. One proposal is to introduce a new species of oyster, Crassostrea ariakensis, the Asian or suminoe oyster. This oyster has been thought to be more disease...