Ecology

A scientist standing in a field of grass holds a flask filled with a brownish liquid.

MIT Integrative Microbiology Initiative will stimulate environmental microbiology research

Project supported by the Simons Foundation aims to reinvigorate environmental science by leaning on Parsons Laboratory's past as a leader in the space.

September 16, 2020

Humpback whales have seen a major rebound in numbers, thanks to conservation efforts, from a few hundred left in the 1970s to tens of thousands at present.

3 Questions: Greg Britten on how marine life can recover by 2050

Committing to aggressive conservation efforts could rebuild ocean habitats and species populations in a few decades.

April 3, 2020

MIT physicists have shown that introducing a transient invader (purple) into a population of bacteria can provoke the system to switch from one stable state (in which the yellow bacteria are dominant) to an alternative stable state, in which green becomes dominant.

How transient invaders can transform an ecosystem

Study finds microbes can alter an environment dramatically before dying out.

February 19, 2020

Continuing a legacy of Antarctic exploration

The Summons Lab compares lipids from Antarctic microbial communities to century-old samples.

November 22, 2019

MIT research finds the emergence of cooperative cell clusters depends on cells encountering each other and aggregating on the surface of polysaccharide particles.

Microbial cooperation at the micron scale impacts biodegradation

MIT researchers demonstrate how often-ignored microbial interactions have a significant impact on the biodegradation of complex materials.

November 15, 2019

MIT geomorphology graduate student Maya Stokes performed fieldwork in the Chilean Altiplano in 2016. She assisted fellow MIT PhD student Christine Y. Chen with her thesis work studying the history of lakes and the paleoclimate of South America.

From streams to teams

Graduate student Maya Stokes, a geomorphology expert and ultimate frisbee coach, shows her passion for teaching in the field and on the field.

August 18, 2019

MIT Professor Otto Cordero is researching whether microbiome engineering could make the threatened Galapagos marine iguana more resilient to climate change.

Featured video: Saving iguanas with science and engineering

Professor Otto Cordero and colleagues ask: Can microbiome engineering make the Galapagos marine iguana more resilient to climate change?

July 3, 2019

MIT researchers have shown that in microbial communities, bacterial species with a small population size under normal conditions can increase in abundance as environmental conditions deteriorate.

How a declining environment affects populations

Study finds that competition between bacterial species can be upended when conditions deteriorate.

May 13, 2019

A computer simulation shows ecological provinces of the marine global ecosystems developed in the Follows Group at MIT. Each color represents a different combination of the most dominant phytoplankton function types (as shown in the Venn diagram at top right). Opacity indicates the total concentration of phytoplankton biomass: The darker the color, the less phytoplankton.

Collaboration to expand the study of microbial oceanography

Simons Foundation-backed CBIOMES brings together researchers in oceanography, statistics, data science, ecology, biogeochemistry, and remote sensing.

July 10, 2018

New MIT research describes how marine microorganisms contribute to a layer of nitrite just below the ocean's sunlit zone.

Understanding microbial competition for nitrogen

Interactions among microorganisms account for nitrite accumulation just below the sunlit zone, with implications for oceanic carbon and nitrogen cycling.

April 10, 2018