Elanor Bell

DepartmentOrganizationEmail

Science Specialties

aquatic ecology, benthic ecology

Current Research

The biomass in extreme lacustrine systems is dominated by microbial communities of Protozoa, algae and bacteria which are governed by microbial loop dynamics. The most successful of these organisms employ strategies that give them a competitive advantage. My research interests lie in testing the hypothesis that one such strategy, the well-known phenomenon mixotrophy, promotes survival in such extreme aquatic environments, through the identification, enumeration and investigation of trophodynamics in mixotrophic protists.Mixotrophic protists from a number of lakes on Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian High Arctic have been collected, identified and enumerated. Growth and grazing experiments were conducted to determine the relative fitness and grazing rates of mixotrophic and obligately heterotrophic/autotrophic protists. Complementary experiments to determine the relative contribution of mixotrophs to primary production and their consumption of bacterial production were also conducted. In concert with existing sampling programs at Potsdam University in other extreme lacustrine ecosystems and existing data collected by the applicant in Antarctica, the data gathered is hoped to add to our understanding of extreme system functioning and elucidate a potential gradient of increasing importance of survival strategies such as mixotrophy in increasingly extreme aquatic environments. Such knowledge will help us to understand how organisms adapt and survive anthropogenically modified (often increasingly extreme) lacustrine environments.