Tricia Thibodeau

  • Postdoctoral Researcher

I am a plankton ecologist focused on the effects of rapid climate change on phytoplankton and zooplankton populations and physiology. The major pillars of my research explore how global climate change (1) has and will impact long-term trends in plankton population dynamics and (2) has affected plankton physiology and feeding ecology.
As a Postdoctoral fellow of the Rhode Island Consortium for Coastal Ecology, Assessment, Innovation, and Modeling (RI-CAIM) I am analyzing the multi-decadal long-term plankton time series in Narragansett Bay. By identifying underlying environmental parameters driving plankton community dynamics my work will facilitate efforts to forecast important ecological phenomena in the region.