Licentiate thesis

The long awaited day of my licentiate thesis defence is closing in (31st of May). Next week I will present my work to this point, at a 30 min seminar followed by a scientific discussion with my opponent, Bethany D. Jenkins from University of Rhode Island, USA.

The content of my thesis (which I also got in print today) is basically a 'kappa', which is an introductory summary of sorts, followed by my first and second paper (the first in review and the second published). The papers were obviously already written prior to the licentiate thesis, so I spent quite some time writing the 'kappa'.
There are certain guidelines for this summary, and is my opportunity to show that I meet the requirements for my examination according to the Swedish Ordinance of Higher Education. As usual, getting started with the writing felt like an uphill run in mid July. It was a struggle in more than one way, but as soon as I reached the summit, and got a better view of where I wanted to go, things started to quickly fall into place as I rushed downhill. With good input from my supervisor I could quickly wrap it up (in difference to my first one year manuscript...).
All in all, it introduces readers to my field of research, including the methods, touch upon the motivation behind the studies, followed by a synthesis of the main findings, and lastly, discussing how to move forward with my research (project no.3, which I will get to in my next blogpost).

The first paper can be found here:

http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net/bg-2017-63/

This is the results of my first scientific cruise, and it's a lot of science. It covers cyanobacterial nitrogen fixers which are either free-living or lives in symbiosis with another phytoplankton in the Western Tropical South Pacific. In short, we found that there was a clear separation of nitrogen fixers based on a depth-temperature gradient, but not in the way we would have thought. That same gradient has been observed elsewhere. We also found interesting differences between one of the cyanobacteria and its proposed host, which contradicts much of the recent literature.

The second paper can be found here:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2017.00810/full

I'm really proud of my contribution to this paper, especially since it includes a sophisticated statistical model, something I never thought I would do.
The results of the model were a central part of the paper and an important addition to the research in my field and in particular on the diatom diazotroph associations (DDA) that this paper cover.
The data was generated from two cruises which my supervisor went on outside of the Amazon River in the Atlantic Ocean in 2010-11. We wanted to explain and predict, by use of the piecewise Structural Equation Model (SEM) the Amazon river plume's impact on the DDAs in this region.
In summary, we found turbidity to be the most prominent environmental parameter, but the SEM also allowed us to explain the DDA distributions in relation to the river plume. Lastly, we were able to distinguish between the environmental preferences of two strains of the DDAs, which has never been done before. The results of the model indicated that one is more coastal and the other is more oceanic.

So, there it is. All my hard work of the last two years is now nicely compiled in this thesis. I'm super happy and proud of my achievement so far. During my last year of undergraduate studies I would never have even dreamt of working with either statistics (modelling) or microbiology (because I was terrible at it). Look where life took me. So whoever you are, whatever you're doing, know that with the right mindset, no challenge is ever too great!