The centric diatom Corethron seen in the image is a unicellular photosynthetic protist with a rigid, porous silica cell wall called a frustule and rings of short and long movable spines.  It was isolated on August 10, 2025, from Equatorial Pacific waters just west of Isabela Island as part of oceanographic fieldwork aboard R/V Marcus G. Langseth.  Along with other key species of Galápagos phytoplankton, Corethron is being studied in the laboratory to uncover the functional traits that contribute to its ecological success.  

Morgan Pavelsky is a researcher in Dr Alecia Septer’s lab in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studies Vibrio-squid symbiosis as a model system for bacterial competition. Some of the lab’s research involves imaging and quantifying molecular weapons (Type VI Secretion System) in various strains of Vibrio fischeri. Morgan leads microscopy for the lab, where she trains and assists students in using microscopy to address their science questions. She earned her M.S. in Biology at the City College of New York in 2011, where she studied marine microbial ecology.

Margarita Lankford is an MS student in the Marchetti Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She is part of an NSF-funded interdisciplinary research initiative aimed at evaluating how different physical modes of nutrient delivery in Galápagos Archipelago influence the phytoplankton community structure, biodiversity and subsequent ocean metabolism. Margarita isolated a variety of eukaryotic phytoplankton species from the Galápagos Archipelago and maintains a live phytoplankton culture collection of isolates from around the globe.

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