Rickard Stenow

Marine biologist who investigates how phytoplankton survives between blooms, focusing on dormancy and resting stages that can survive in sediments. I investigate how they survive by measuring nutrient exchange and assimilation on a single cell level, focusing on cyanobacteria, diatoms and heterotrophic bacteria that interacts with them. 

I manly use stable isotopic tracers to measure carbon and nitrogen assimilation of individual cells, these cells are then analyzed using methods such as SIMS, nano-SIMS, and EA-IRMS.

Ongoing projects: How will cyanobacteria survive dormancy in warmer climate and start blooms in the future? (Carl Tryggers stiftelse 2026-2028, supervisor: Malin Olofsson)
 

[4] Stenow, R., Robertson, K. E., Kourtchenko, O., Whitehouse, J. M., Pinder, M. M., Benvenuto, G., Töpel, M., Godhe, A., & Ploug, H. 2024. Resting cells of Skeletonema marinoi assimilate organic compounds and respire by dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium in dark, anoxic conditions. Environmental Microbiology, 26(4), e16625. https://doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.16625

[1] Stenow, R., Olofsson, M., Robertson, K. E., Kourtchenko, O., Whitehouse, J. M., Ploug, H., & Godhe, A. 2020. Resting stages of Skeletonema marinoi assimilate nitrogen from the ambient environment under dark, anoxic conditions. Journal of Phycology, 56(3), 699-708. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpy.12975

[2] Stenow, R., Robertson, K. E., Whitehouse, J. M., & Ploug, H. 2023. Single cell dynamics and nitrogen transformations in the chain forming diatom Chaetoceros affinis. ISME Journal, 17, 2070–2078. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-023-01511-z

[3] Stenow, R., Olofsson, M., Whitehouse, J. M., & Ploug, H. 2024. Chain forming diatoms use different strategies to avoid diffusion limited N assimilation. Limnol. Oceanogr. 69, 2391–2405. https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.12677