Blog on Marine Microbial Macroecology Lab

Bedford Basin plankton sample

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 11:58:00 +0000

Images of plankton from the Bedford Basin, January 2025

Niall's last day

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 11:58:00 +0000

Niall McGinty moving on to a new position

PhD defences in Summer 2025

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Two students defended their PhDs this summer

Bedford Basin plankton sample

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 11:58:00 +0000

Images of plankton from the Bedford Basin, January 2025

Bedford Basin planton sample

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 11:58:00 +0000

Images of plankton from the Bedford Basin, January 2025

Happy New Year

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Happy new year to all!

Gingerbread village.

Bedford Basin Spring Bloom Study begins

Mon, 01 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Nuwanthi Samarasinghe and Niall McGinty with help of much of the rest of the lab have started sampling the spring bloom plankton in the Bedford Basin.

Take a look at some of the plankton community contributing to this year’s bloom (images taken by Laura Bretherton and Ruby Hu).

Microscopy of samples from the Bedford Basin.

Gradients 5 cruise in the tropical Pacific

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Laura Bretherton, Niall McGinty, and Kevan Merrow participated in the Simons Foundation-funded Gradients 5 cruise as part of the SCOPE research program.

During 28 days at sea, Laura, Niall and Kevan collected dozens of samples of phytoplankton and zooplankton communities for analysis back in the lab. When all the processing is done, we will have much better knowledge of elemental (C, N, P) and macromolecular content and ratios for these communties across a gradient that spans the oligotrophic gyre to the equatorial upwelling.

Nuwanthi Samarasinghe a 3 minute thesis finalist at Dalhousie

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Nuwanthi Samarasinghe recently participated in the 3MT (three-minute thesis) event at Dalhousie. Graduate students distilled the background, goals, and findings of their research into a three minute presentation with one slide targetted at a general audience. Students first competed in heats and Nuwanthi was one of eleven students selected for the final competition held this week at Dalhousie.

Congratulations to Nuwanthi for her presentation titled: “Do Small Diatoms Matter in the Ocean?” Nuwanthi showed the audience how the smallest diatoms really are important contributors to the marine phytoplankton communities and biogeochemical cycles.

Happy Anniversary to our new lab

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 12:00:00 +0000

We’ve been in our new lab for two years

Bayesian modeling workshop

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Workshop of phytoplankton modelling using Bayesian methods at MIT

Moving into the new lab

Sun, 02 Dec 2018 09:00:00 +0000

We moved into our new lab this week!

Photo of the new lab shortly after starting to move in.

MMaB Lab party

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 12:00:00 +0000

Here’s the lab group from our spring celebration. Congratulations in particular to our honours undergradute students: Sally Faulkner, Matt Fyfe, Akarsh Pai, and Catherine Fiset.

It’s impossible to get everyone together at the same time, but we did well.

Shown in the figure (L-to-R, F-to-B): Felicia, Catherine, Akarsh, Sally, Ina, Yue, Ruby, Kindy, Rosie, Niall, Zoe, Li, Doug (collaborator), Justin, Andrew, Wei (friend of the lab).

Congratulations to our 2018 honours students

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 12:00:00 +0000

Sally Faulkner, Matt Fyfe, Akarsh Pai, and Catherine Fiset have all completed their honours research projects in the lab. Congratulations to them all on their hard work and impressive accomplishments.

Sally presented her work at a meeting at Memorial University in St John’s Newfoundland and won second place for her presentation at the annual Science Atlantic conference, held right here in Sackville this March. Her work is featured in a Mount Allison news story.

Visitors from TAMUG

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000

Sam Setta and Laura Bretherton visited our lab for a week to work on bioinformatic analysis of some GOMRI experiments.

We always try to be good hosts for our visitors – this time in addition to lots of hard work this incldued a trip to Hopewell Rocks and Cora’s, a favourite local breakfast place.

Work by Michaël Bradet-Legris featured by Mount Allison

Sat, 15 Jul 2017 12:00:00 +0000

The computing and bioinformatic work being done by summer research student Michaël Bradet-Legris was featured in a Mount Allison story this week.

Click here for the full article.

Archive version.

Summer students working in the lab

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 12:00:00 +0000

Sally Faulkner, Matt Fyfe, Akarsh Pai, and Catherine Fiset are summer research students working in the lab this summer. They are all busy growing cultures, performing assays, and helping out with lots of tasks around the lab.

This week Sally and Matt got a fun day at the beach to collect seawater for their lab cultures. Even indoor lab scientists need to get some sun now and then!

Projected plankton community change featured at the BBC

Tue, 23 Feb 2016 12:00:00 +0000

Work by Andrew Barton and Charlie Stock (Princeton/GFDL) and Andrew Irwin and Zoe Finkel showing how North Atlantic phytoplankton communities may chnage over the next century was published today in PNAS.

A news story about this work appeared on the BBC website.

Research meeting

Thu, 11 Jun 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation meeting held at Mount Allison University in Sackville

Research on extinction rates published in Science

Mon, 04 May 2015 09:58:00 +0000

Fossils helping to identify marine life at high risk of extinction

Changing phytoplankton niches

Fri, 01 May 2015 12:00:00 +0000

New paper on phytoplankton niches published in PNAS.

Post-doctoral research opportunities

Sun, 19 Apr 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Post-doctoral positions available

Dr Ina Benner's research featured in student newspaper (The Argosy)

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Dr Benner’s work on phytoplankton evolution was featured in The Argosy this week.

Click here for the full article.

Gulf of Mexico research project funded

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 11:58:00 +0000

Mount Allison researcher part of a $7.25 M grant to study effects of Gulf of Mexico oil spill

Zoe Finkel awarded a Canada Research Chair

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:29:00 +0000

Mount Allison researcher in climate change receives national recognition