The members of the Wilhelm research group are interested in the synergies between microbes and biogeochemical cycles in aquatic systems. Because microorganisms shape the environment in which they live, they are important members of biogeochemical cycles: in contrast the biogeochemistry of aquatic systems strongly influences the microorganisms that proliferate. Research in marine surface waters around the world continues to address how viruses, bacteria and algae interact with biogeochemistry of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and iron. In freshwater systems the group is also interested in how imbalances in this relationship lead to sustained toxic cyanobacterial blooms in some of the world’s largest lakes. Ongoing studies in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, The Laurentian Great Lakes and Lake Tai (Taihu) in the People’s Republic of China are employing state-of-the-art tools in molecular biology to address these questions.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications
Elemental quotas and physiology of a southwestern Pacific Ocean plankton community as a function of iron availability (with Andrew L. King, Benjamin S. Twining, Gary R. LeCleir, Jennifer M. DeBruyn, Robert F. Strzepek, Cynthia L. Breene, Stuart Pickmere, Michael J. Ellwood, Philip W. Boyd, and David A. Hutchins), Aquatic Microbial Ecology (2013)
The rate of carbon fixation by phytoplankton in marine surface waters is often tied to...
High abundances of cyanomyoviruses in marine ecosystems demonstrate ecological relevance (with Audrey R. Matteson, Janet M. Rowe, Alise J. Ponsero, Tiana M. Pimentel, and Philip W. Boyd), FEMS Microbiology Ecology (2013)
The distribution of cyanomyoviruses was estimated using a quantitative PCR (qPCR) approach that targeted the...
Comparative metagenomics of toxic freshwater cyanobacteria bloom communities on two continents, PLoS One (2012)
De-MetaST-BLAST: A Tool for the Validation of Degenerate Primer Sets and Data Mining of Publicly Available Metagenomes (with Christopher Gulvik, T C. Effler, and Alison Buchan), PLoS ONE (2012)
Development and use of primer sets to amplify nucleic acid sequences of interest is fundamental...
Ocean viruses and their effects on microbial communities and biogeochemical cycles, F1000 Biology Reports (2012)
Viruses are the most abundant life forms on Earth, with an estimated 10^31 total viruses...
Books
Manual of Aquatic Viral Ecology (with Markus Weinbauer and Curtis Suttle) (2010)
ASLO's first e-Book publication is the Manual of Aquatic Viral Ecology (MAVE), edited by Steven...
Book Chapters
Determining rates of virus production in aquatic systems by the virus reduction approach, (with M.G. Weinbauer and J.M. Rowe), Manual of Aquatic Viral Ecology (2010)
The reduction approach to assess virus production and the prokaryotic mortality by viral lysis stops...
The construction and analysis of marker gene libraries (with S.M. Short and F. Chen), Manual of Aquatic Viral Ecology (2010)
Marker genes for viruses are typically amplified from aquatic samples to determine whether specific viruses...
Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms: Chapter 20: Analytical Methods Workgroup Report (with Armah de la Cruz, Parke Rublee, James Hungerford, Paul Zimba, Jussi Meriluoto, Kathy Echols, Michael Meyer, Gerard Stelma, Rosemonde Mandeville, Linda Lawton, Kaarina Sivonen, and Ambrose Furey), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Papers (2008)
The topic of exposure assessment overlaps with other topic areas of this workshop. It includes...