2024 HALDANE PRIZE SHORTLIST: Jihyun Olivia Kim discusses her paper “Heatwave-mediated decreases in phytoplankton quality negatively affect zooplankton productivity“, which has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s 2024 Haldane Prize for Early Career Researchers:
👋 About the Author
Broadly, my research interests lie in understanding how human impacts affect freshwater ecosystems. From a young age, I was fascinated by nature and was unwaveringly determined to study something . Growing up in Alberta, I had spent a lot of time around mountains and lakes. However, my interest in freshwater systems specifically, didn’t really solidify until my undergraduate degree when I first heard about organisms called ‘plankton’. I was so curious to learn more about these microscopic organisms that support entire aquatic food webs – and most people haven’t even heard of them! This led to my master’s degree thesis research in Dr. Michelle Tseng’s lab where I studied how heatwaves impact phytoplankton and their zooplankton consumers. Following my master’s degree, I shifted gears and started my PhD studying the impact of microplastic pollution on amphibians in freshwater lakes. Currently, my PhD research takes me to one of the world’s leading freshwater research facilities as part of The pELAstic Project.
🔎 About the paper
With climate change, the frequency of extreme temperature events like heatwaves places a novel stress on aquatic ecosystems. Phytoplankton are the foundation of these ecosystems, and therefore offer an opportunity to understand the impact of heatwaves. Heatwave-induced effects on phytoplankton can lead to cascading effects on food web productivity. Therefore, our paper examined how heatwaves impact phytoplankton at the community-scale and if it can indirectly affect zooplankton consumers.
Our paper describes the clear negative effects of heatwave exposure on phytoplankton-based nutrients through changes in concentrations of key elements (C, N, and P) and fatty acids. Trying to determine the concentrations of these indicators was a very cool opportunity for me to collaborate with other research labs and learn about various analytical methods and instrumentation. We found heatwave exposure led to unique differences in phytoplankton nutritional quality in comparison to a consistent warm temperature exposure. Importantly, changes in phytoplankton nutritional quality had immediate effects on their consumers as reductions in phytoplankton quality contributed to decreases in zooplankton community biomass and shifts in their fatty acid profiles.
Right: Frogs living in one of the ponds where plankton was collected.
(Credit: Jihyun Olivia Kim)
Moving forward, bringing our knowledge on the effects of various temperature scenarios at the phytoplankton-zooplankton interface to greater environmental relevance will help us understand how aquatic ecosystems will be impacted by extreme temperature events.
Read the full list of articles shortlisted for the 2024 Haldane Prize here.
