Dr. Mike Stukel

Mike is an associate professor at FSU. His research spans the intersection of plankton ecology and marine biogeochemistry. He has a love for all the zooplankton of the oceans and a passion for understanding how these microscopic organisms influence everything from the global climate to the local fisheries yield.  Appendicularians are his favorite plankton.  Unless it's ctenophores.  Or salps.  Perhaps phaeodarians, krill, Lingulodinium polyedrum, hyperiid amphipods, Tomopteris, or pyrosomes.  It might be copepods.  But he doesn't like chaetognaths.  Contact: mstukel@fsu.edu

​Curriculum VItae

 

Natalie Yingling

Natalie is in her sixth year at FSU.  She joined our lab after finishing a Masters degree from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and is pursuing her Ph.D. at FSU.  Natalie is working on the intersection of phytoplankton and zooplankton ecology.  Her research includes investigating phytoplankton distributions in a salp bloom, determining phytoplankton nutrient utilization in the Gulf of Mexico, and investigating mixotrophy in the open ocean.  As a member of our lab, Natalie has already been to two parts of the Southern Ocean, as well as the California Current Ecosystem and the Indian Ocean.  Contact: nyingling@fsu.edu

 

Christian Fender

Christian is a sixth year Ph.D. student with a love for gelatinous zooplankton.  He's pretty crazy about them.  His research project is focused on salps of the Chatham Rise.  He is using scanning electron microscopy and other approaches in an attempt to define the niche space of different salp species.  He is also interested in pyrosomes and other pelagic tunicates.  Contact: ckfender@fsu.edu

 

 

Heather Forrer

Heather is in a fifth year graduate student at FSU.  She is a member of both our lab at the Robert Spencer organic biogeochemistry lab.  Heather's research cuts across disciplines as she investigates the intersections of the nitrogen and carbon cycles.  She using advance FT-ICR-MS techniques for ultra-high resolution characterization of the organic matter contained in sinking particles.  Contact: hforrer@fsu.edu

 

 

Tz-Chian Chen

Tz-Chian is a first year Ph.D. student who brings a love of zooplankton to FSU.  He joined our lab after completing a Masters at National Taiwan University with Chih-hao Hsieh where he published a manuscript investigating copepod-induced trophic cascades.  Tz-Chian is working with the CCE LTER program where his first project is focused on the effects of marine heatwaves across multiple trophic levels.  Contact: tc22@fsu.edu

 

 

 

Maggie Johnson

Maggie is an undergraduate working in our lab.  She has been working closely with Natalie Yingling and her research has focused on understanding phytoplankton dynamics in the Indian Ocean through epifluorescence microscopy.

 

Tom Kelly

Tom completed his Ph.D. in the FSU Plankton Ecology and Biogeochemistry Lab in the fall of 2020. His research focuses on marine biogeochemistry and the application of such diverse tools as radioactive isotopes and inverse models to understanding the biological pump. Tom became one of the go-to members of our department for everything from computer programming to instrument engineering and biogeochemical modeling.  He also already logged several months at sea.  Tom is now a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  Contact: tbkelly@alaska.edu

 

 

Taylor Shropshire

Taylor completed his Ph.D. in the FSU Plankton Ecology and Biogeochemistry Lab in summer of 2020. Taylor developed a three-dimensional model of ocean circulation and lower trophic level dynamics to model zooplankton in the Gulf of Mexico. He then developed an individual-based Lagrangian model of larval tuna and coupled it to his zooplankton model to simulate feeding, growth, starvation, predation, and survival rates of larval tuna in the oligotrophic regions in which they are spawned.  He is using his model to address the impact of climate change on these organisms.  Taylor is now a researcher at NC State University. Contact: tashrops@ncsu.edu

 

Opeyemi Kehinde

Opeyemi completed a masters degree in Oceanography related to the interactions between marine biogeochemistry and surface currents and winds.  His research addressed the impact of meso- and submesoscale features in the ocean on the carbon and nitrogen cycles in the Indian Ocean spawning ground of Southern Bluefin tuna.  His thesis was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.  Contact: opeyemi.kehinde891@gmail.com

 

 

 

John Irving

John was a member of the modeling wing of our lab and split his time between the EOAS dept. and the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS).  John's focus was on incorporating predation- and starvation-induced mortality into Lagrangian individual-based models of larval snapper in the Gulf of Mexico and Lagrangian modeling to estimate carbon sequestration temporal horizons in the Pacific Ocean.  He defended his masters in 2022.  Contact: jpi18@my.fsu.edu