Barbara d’Amario, awarded the 2017 Cushing Prize

ICTA-UAB researcher Barbara d’Amario has been selected as the 2017 Cushing Prize winner for her paper in Journal of Plankton Research, “Coccolithophore haploid and diploid distribution patterns in the Mediterranean Sea: can a haplo-diploid life cycle be advantageous under climate change?" 

The prize honours the memory of David Cushing, Founding Editor of Journal of Plankton Research. It is awarded annually for the best first-authored paper by an early career stage scientist published in the journal during the previous year. The prize helps foster the interesting and high-quality papers by young scientists that David Cushing so actively supported. 

The article explains that coccolithophores are unicellular pelagic algae, capable of calcification. In the Mediterranean Sea, several species have a complex life cycle and the calcification products of each life phase (heterococcoliths, holococcoliths) can be distinguished. The distribution of the calcified coccolithophore life phases was analyzed along a W-E Mediterranean transect. The results highlighted how the abundance and relative proportion of the life phases vary following the main environmental gradients.

The article concludes that a complex life cycle like that of coccolithophores might contribute to the adaptability of these organisms to the south-eastern (SE) Mediterranean environment, in conditions characterized by surface water with relatively high calcite saturation state, high temperature, stratification and nutrient limitation; also, it might support the survival of species whose diploid phases are in contrast adapted to Atlantic or south-western (SW) Mediterranean conditions. Overall, a haplo-diploid life cycle could provide a way to adapt to environmental changes.

Read the article here: http://ictaweb.uab.cat/pubs_detail.php?id=1787