"I really enjoy being able to get stuck into a wide variety of challenges that ultimately contribute in helping us understand what’s going on in our oceans and in the atmosphere."
Dr Glen Tarran is interested in the use and development of technology to automate the analysis of plankton community structure through flow cytometry. He manages the PML flow cytometry facility and has a great deal of experience of using flow cytometry in a wide range of marine, freshwater and other applications involving plankton and many other particles suspended in water. He currently characterises and quantifies microbial communities with the NERC National Capability programmes of the Western (English) Channel Observatory and the Atlantic Meridional Transect.
His published papers relate to plankton community composition and dynamics, particularly in the open ocean, as well as a range of papers associated with the application of flow cytometry in aquatic ecology.
Flow cytometry is a generic technique for optically analysing and quantifying particles suspended in a medium. The analysis is multi-parametric, each particle can have two light scattering and 3 fluorescence properties measured simultaneously at rates up to 5000 particles per second. The PML's flow cytometers can also pick out (sort) sub-populations from samples to give pure samples, either for culturing, verification or rate measurements on specific components of a community. The flow cytometers at PML have been used to analyse phytoplankton, bacteria, viruses, silt, blood, beads, paint particles, squid ink, detergent bubbles, metazoan tissue cell suspensions, milk, oil and so on. Basically, if it's in suspension it can be measured.
Glen has over 100 peer-reviewed research papers and book chapters and has also published many data sets.
- Zubkov, M. V., Sleigh, M. A., Tarran, G. A., Burkill, P. H. and Leakey, R. J. L. (1998) Picoplanktonic community structure on an Atlantic transect from 50°N to 50°S. Deep-Sea Research I, 45: 1339-1355. doi: 10.1016/S0967-0637(98)00015-6
- Tarran, G.A., Heywood, J.L. and Zubkov, M.V. (2006) Latitudinal changes in the standing stocks of eukaryotic nano- and picophytoplankton in the Atlantic Ocean. Deep-Sea Research II, 53(14-16): 1516-1529. doi: 10.1016/j.dsr2.2006.05.004
- Zubkov, M.V. and Tarran, G.A. (2008). High bacterivory by the smallest phytoplankton in the temperate North Atlantic Ocean. Nature, 455, 224-226. doi:10.1038/nature07236
- Mawji, E., Gledhill, M., Milton, J.A., Tarran, G.A., Ussher, S., Thompson, A., Wolff, G.A., Worsfold, P.J. and Eric P. Achterberg, E.P. (2008). Hydroxamate siderophores: occurrence and importance in the Atlantic Ocean. Environmental Science and Technology 42 (23), 8675-8680. doi: 10.1021/es801884r
- Schattenhofer, M., B.M. Fuchs, R. Amann, M.V. Zubkov, G.A. Tarran & J. Pernthaler (2009). Latitudinal distribution of prokaryotic picoplankton populations in the Atlantic Ocean. Environmental Microbiology, doi:10.1111/j.1462-2920.2009.01929.x
- Tarran, G.A. and Bruun, J.T. (2015). Nanoplankton and picoplankton in the Western English Channel: seasonality and variability from 2007-2013. Progress in Oceanography (Part B), 137,446-455. doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2015.04.024
Recent publications
- Serret, P; Lozano, J; Harris, CB; Lange, PK; Tarran, GA; Tilstone, GH; Woodward, EMS; Zubkov, MV; 2023. Respiration, phytoplankton size and the metabolic balance in the Atlantic gyres. Frontiers in Marine Science.
- Stern, R; Picard, K; Clarke, J; Walker, CE; Martins, C; Marshall, C.; Amorim, AL; Woodward, EMS; Widdicombe, CE; Tarran, GA; Edwards, M; 2023. Composition and Patterns of Taxa Assemblages in the Western Channel Assessed by 18S Sequencing, Microscopy and Flow Cytometry. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.
- Li, H; Tarran, GA; Dall’Olmo, G; Rees, AP; Denis, M; Wang, C; Gregori, G; Dong, Y; Zhao, Y; Zhang, W; Xiao, T; 2023. Organization of planktonic Tintinnina assemblages in the Atlantic Ocean. Frontiers in Marine Science.
- Phongphattarawat, S; Bouman, HA; Lomas, MW; Sathyendranath, S; Tarran, GA; Ulloa, O; Zubkov, MV; 2023. Ecophysiological basis of spatiotemporal patterns in picophytoplankton pigments in the global ocean. Frontiers in Marine Science.
- Airs, RL; Beale, R; Polimene, L; Chen, Y; Mausz, MA; Scanlan, DJ; Widdicombe, CE; Tarran, GA; Woodward, EMS; Harris, C; McEvoy, AJ; 2022. Seasonal measurements of the nitrogenous osmolyte glycine betaine in marine temperate coastal waters. Biogeochemistry.