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I am a plankton ecologist broadly interested in the interlinks between biological, physical and chemical variances at the microscale. My research focuses on microbial ecology, physical-biological interactions and ecological time series. Currently, I am currently a member of the Physico-biological interactions in the ocean (InFiBiO) group at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA), in Mallorca, Spain, where I study how viscosity varies at ocean microscale and what are the implications of this variance for the functioning of planktonic systems.
My research is interdisciplinary. It involves the study of purely physical and chemical problems, such as small-scale turbulence, viscosity, ocean acidification or nutrient stoichiometry, but also of ecological processes, interactions and responses with evolutionary implications, such as bacterivory, nutrient uptake, chemotaxis, motility and microbial shape diversity. This interdisciplinarity has led me to use a wide variety of techniques and approaches, including microfluidics, microcosms and mesocosms experiments, microscopy and flow cytometry, image analysis, Matlab programming, time series analysis, statistical modelling, environmental monitoring and oceanographic cruises. I have also worked in a broad range of marine systems, from polar to tropical, and studied both pelagic and benthic communities, and a wide spectrum of organisms, from bacteria to fishes, although my emphasis has always been on plankton. I have ample experience in both the characterization of physical, chemical and biological variability and the study of biological responses to this variability. Thus, although I am a biologist by training, my research is truly multidisciplinary, in the intersection of biology, physics, and biogeochemistry.