Tiny Organisms, Big Insights: Phytoplankton Research Transforming Marine Science
Led by Dr. Antonietta Quigg, the Phytoplankton Dynamics Lab at TAMUG uses phytoplankton to illuminate pressing environmental questions tied to water, climate, and energy.
Growing up on the Australian continent surrounded by water, Texas A&M University at Galveston Regents Professor of Marine Biology in the College of Marine Sciences & Maritime Studies, Dr. Antonietta Quigg, knew from a young age that a career in marine biology was the right fit.
“I was a Jacques Cousteau kid. I just loved that show along with the work of Ron and Valerie Taylor who studied sharks. I always begged my parents to go to the beach,” Quigg said. “I grew up in Australia, so yeah, I was like, I’m going to be on the ocean. I’m going to be a marine biologist.”
While Quigg grew up watching programs about some of the largest creatures in the ocean, her scientific passion eventually shifted toward one of the smallest —and most essential components of marine ecosystems.
“When I finished undergrad, one of the first jobs I got was working with a person who was a professor focused on phytoplankton. After doing animal systems, I realized that I was ready to move to the light, pardon the pun,” said Dr. Quigg. “The more I learned about them, the more I understood their significance. I was hooked. The fact that they were the first ones to produce oxygen on the planet and then all the great things that they do in our oceans make phytoplankton a great thing to work with.”
Quigg’s world-renowned Phytoplankton Dynamics Lab at Texas A&M University at Galveston, uses phytoplankton as model organisms to address questions about water, climate and energy. The lab focuses predominantly on the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston Bay and other Texas bayous, but also works alongside colleagues in different regions of the world. When thinking of the overall health of a marine system, phytoplankton act as a canary in the coalmine giving early warning signs when an environment is under stress. Phytoplankton are at the heart of Dr. Quigg’s work.
“So, when you’re talking about estuaries, like Galveston Bay, if there’s a plankton bloom, they’re telling us that the system is stressed out. So usually if you see a bloom, it’s nutrient stress. If we get an oil spill, phytoplankton generally navigate the oil spill. They generally use it as another carbon source. But again, you see a change in the community composition. So that shift in the community tells you that maybe there’s too much oil that is overwhelming and stressing the environment,” Quigg said. “And so, from that point of view, they really, I call them like a biomarker or an eco-sentinel. There are all those kinds of words that people use to tell you about what kind of stresses are in the environment.”
In the Gulf of Mexico, phytoplankton have been tied to the formation of the dead zone – a low-oxygen (hypoxic) area located on the continental shelf off the Louisiana and Texas coasts that is \\\\\\\\caused by nutrient-rich runoff from the Mississippi River. The Dead Zone causes significant fish kills and threatens the Gulf’s fishing and tourism industries. Part of Dr. Quigg’s research involves looking at how phytoplankton act along the coasts as well as further out to sea within various environments.
“Wherever you see them, they’re telling us something about the environment,” Quigg said. “In the ocean where it’s clean and there’s very little nutrients the community’s completely different from what we see in the coastal zone.”
Quigg noted that the students are the lifeblood in the lab and are what keeps the research going.
“The students just keep me young, keep me fresh, keep me excited, and keep me wanting to innovate in different kinds of ways,” Quigg said.
Texas A&M University at Galveston’s proximity to various coastal and offshore marine environments provide an invaluable opportunity to conduct research.
“We’re a hundred feet from the water,” Quigg said. “And we work in the boat basin, we work in Galveston, we may work in the Gulf of Mexico. Where we want to work is literally at our doorstep. And that gives us a lot of opportunities just to try things because we want to try something new. The water’s on our doorstep.”
In addition to studying phytoplankton, Dr. Quigg and her students are investigating the impact of Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the oyster beds along the Texas coast. Also referred to as forever chemicals, PFAS are human produced substances that resist grease, water, and heat, causing them to persist indefinitely in the environment and human body. Used since the 1940s in non-stick cookware, food packaging, firefighting foam, and stain-resistant fabrics, they contaminate water, soil, and food. Dr. Quigg’s lab will be working with Dr. David Hala, Associate Professor, Marine Biology, and Dr. Karl Kaiser, Professor, Marine and Coastal Environmental Science in Texas A&M University at Galveston’s College of Marine Sciences & Maritime Studies, as well as Texas Sea Grant to find an answer to the question of whether more PFAS chemicals will be detected in native shrimp, as well as cultured oysters versus native oysters. The distinction is important since cultured oysters tend to be on the surface, whereas the native oysters tend to be at the bottom among the sediments.
“The impact of forever chemicals on shrimp and oysters is important scientifically, but it’s an important management and policy issue, including the human side of things. We’re working with Dr. Ashley Ross, Associate Professor, Marine and Coastal Environmental Science College of Marine Sciences & Maritime Studies who is a political scientist who’s going to look at perceptions of risk and those kinds of things,” Quigg said. “We are really focused on fishing communities being more susceptible than the rest of the community. And I think that’s important because our fishing communities don’t get a lot of love. And so, one of the things that we want to highlight is the extraordinary work that they’re doing and that forever chemicals may be something that they need to think about along the entire Texas coast.”
Dr, Quigg earned her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Chemistry from La Trobe University and her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Monash University, both in Australia. In 2023, Dr. Quigg was inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in recognition of her significant contributions to the scientific community through her research of Texas’s coastal ecosystem and dedication to mentoring students.
