BioSWOT-Med cruise : Interview with Gérald Gregori

Seeking to uncover the drivers of plankton diversity and distribution in the Mediterranean Sea

Gérald Grégori, BioSWOT-Med’s Co-Chief Scientist, describes the sampling strategy of the campaign and how it will allow gathering data to investigate the drivers of plankton diversity and distribution in the Mediterranean Sea by studying finescale features such as filaments or small eddies. Even if these structures are weak and short-lived (fed days) they can indeed strongly influence the microbial community.

Gérald Grégori, BioSWOT-Med’s Co-Chief Scientist, in the lab aboard R/V L’Atalante

THE RESEARCH THEMES – Gérald Grégori is a researcher at CNRS (National center for scientific research – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), in the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography located in Marseille (France).  His research focuses on marine planktonic microbes, and their relationships with the ecosystem and biogeochemistry. To do so, he studies the factors that influence their abundance and distribution along the water column, in various locations such as coastal or open ocean. The originality of this research is to use single cell analysis to study them, both in situ and in the laboratory, with a particular focus on flow cytometry. In the BioSWOT-Med campaign he is the Chief Scientist for Biology.

Contact: Tosca Ballerini

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The cytometers in the laboratory aboard the R/V L’Atalante