Ricardo Parizotto Ribeiro

Cyanobacteria are some of the most important marine oxygen-producing organisms on the plant and can be found in the surface layers of most bodies of water. Many also fix their own nitrogen, allowing them to thrive when conditions are right. When conditions are too right, they may form dense blooms that both starves the water layers below them of sunlight and provides them with ample amounts of nitrogen. When this happens, the waters below will rapidly use as much of this new nitrogen as possible, using up their supply of dissolved oxygen in the process. This results in eutrophic waters low in oxygen where most species can no longer survive.

Cyanobacterial blooms are common in the Baltic Sea but are increasingly more common as climate change has increased water temperatures. Combined with overall decreased salinities, cyanobacterial populations are shifting in the Baltic Sea.

My PhD project focuses on studying these cyanobacterial populations, how they shift over temporal, salinity and temperature gradients. I will also study how different cyanobacteria populations react and adapt to different salinity gradients, temperature gradients and in the presence of competing strains.

Master of Biology                                                                         08/2022 - 10/2024

Plant Biology for Sustainable Production - Genetic and Molecular Plant Biology (SLU, Sweden)

Bachelor's Degree in Bioscience                                                08/2020 – 06/2022

Molecular Biodesign (University of Skövde, Sweden)

Mechanical Technician                                                                 05/2015 – 12/2018

Technical course in mechanics (Federal University of Technology – Paraná (Brazil)