Emanuele
Giacomuzzo

Hi! I'm Ema, and I study how connections between ecosystems shape their diversity and function.

I am a PhD student in the lab of Florian Altermatt at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) and University of Zurich in Switzerland. There I study how flows of non-living resources connect ecosystems. Ecosystems are intrinsically linked by such flows; for example, leaves falling from forest trees into streams, bears transporting fish remains deep into forests, or wind carrying nutrients across the Atlantic to link the Sahara Desert with the Amazon rainforest. Despite the ubiquity of these connections, how the size of ecosystems influences these resource flows remains poorly understood. Take, for instance, leaves falling from forests into streams. Does the size of the forest determine the type of leaves that fall? And do streams of different sizes respond differently to these inputs? Answering such questions in natural environments is challenging due to the many confounding variables. To address this, my PhD focuses on disentangling these complexities through controlled laboratory experiments. I use model protist communities to simulate ecosystems that exchange non-living resources, enabling me to investigate how ecosystem size influences resource flows and their effects in a simplified yet meaningful way (proof-of-concept).