Elemental Biology, Limnology, & Global Change

CLAY PRATER

Elemental Biology, Limnology, & Global Change

About Clay

My research explores relationships between organisms and the environment by focusing on the currency that ties them together— elements. By combining approaches from ecological stoichiometry and ionomics, I study how human mobilization of elements influences organismal ecology and evolution and how these responses, in turn, feed back to influence biogeochemical cycling. This work combines 1) controlled experimentation examining the effects of elemental imbalances on organismal phenotypic traits with 2) complimentary population and ecosystem-scale studies, using mass balance principles to understand cross-system elemental flows through organisms and the environment.

Clay's CV

ELEMENTAL BIOLOGY

Organisms play a predominant role in shaping flows of elements through the bioshpere. To understand these large scale dynamics, we must first appreciate the molecular and organismal-scale processes that drive biological uptake and turnover of all elements.

AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS

Lakes, streams, and wetlands are strongly connected to their surrounding environments yet remain distinct ecosystems. This makes them ideal for tracing flows of elements and energy within their waters and across their atmospheric and terrestrial boundaries.

GLOBAL CHANGE

Human mobilization of elements and resultant climate changes are the most pressing global issue of our time. I'm dedicated to mitigating the socio-ecological consequences of these changes locally and in the most impacted communities abroad.

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Rules of Life

Generality is elusive in the biological sciences despite all organisms using identical building blocks (elements) and energy molecules to stitch them together. In this NSF-funded "Rules of Life" project, we seek to develop a cornerstone principle of ecological stoichiometric theory "the growth rate hypothesis" into a growth rate "rule." In doing so, we are examining relationships between elemental supply (C, N, P), biochemistry, and organismal metabolism across 3 major kingdoms of life (Monera, Protista, & Animalia) to better understand the common factors regulating growth rates across the tree of life.

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Dusty - Greenland

The Arctic biome is the fastest changing area on the planet. Lakes here are common fixtures across the terrestrial landscape that respond strongly to environmental changes and record this information in long-term sediment archives. This project combines contemporary monitoring of dust elemental deposition into lakes with contemporary and paleolimnological analyses of lake ecosystem ecology and geochemistry to gain a mechanistic understanding of relationships between climate, cross-system nutrient flux, and biological feedbacks across paraglacial environmental gradients near the Greenland Ice sheet.

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Winam Gulf - Kenya

Human landuse practices are often at odds with human and aquatic ecosystem health. This tension is especially felt in developing countries where watershed urbanization and agriculture can mobilize nutrients and toxic elements, leading to reduced air and water quality. We are working to better understand these linkages in the Winam Gulf region of Lake Victoria as part of a Royal Society funded collaboration between researchers from the British Geological Survey, the University of Eldoret, the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, and several UK universities.

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Zooplankton communities - Poland

Cladoceran zooplankton consumers are key components of lake ecosystems, consuming algae and bacteria at the base of foodwebs and transferring energy and nutrients to higher trophic levels. This process is controlled by both the amount and quality of dietary food resources and by competition for these resources among cladoceran species. While organismal-level nutritional requirements are well-established for a few cladoceran species, we still lack a general framework for understanding how community composition changes regulate nutrient flows through aquatic foodwebs. To this end, we are working to establish population threshold food concentration estimates for a variety of cladoceran species raised across dietary phosphorus and fatty-acid supply gradients to predict community composition changes in natural environments.

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Call for Abstracts SEGH Live: Americas!

ATTN: All environmental nerds! The Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health (SEGH) Americas Section invites you to join us for two jam-packed days …