Robert E. Benoit Distinguished Lecture Series

Healthy fresh waters rely on the millions of microbes found in every drop. Understanding events that lead us to consider these waters “unhealthy”, like toxic cyanobacterial blooms, requires a focus on not just the organisms causing the problem, but also on all the other microbes in the system.  Over the past 20 years an array of biomolecular tools – including DNA and RNA sequencing, metabolomics, and the data science that supports these – have been developed in concert with lab and field studies in the Laurentian Great Lakes as well as bodies of water around the world. These tools have been deployed with a focus on why we are seeing more algal blooms, why these blooms are more toxic and how the interplay between bacteria and viruses works to constrain the spatial and temporal extent of these failing ecosystems. From the perspective of understanding how we might best deal with harmful freshwater blooms in the future, the presentation will new insight into the interactions between ecology and physiology of viruses and bacteria and the implications of a changing climate.