Aitziber Zufiaurre

Biography

She graduated in Biology at the University of the Basque Country in 2012. After it, in 2013 she hold a Master degree in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning and Management at the same University mentioned above. In early 2015 she obtained a FPI scholarship in order to develop her PhD in one research area of the project LACUS. This PhD is supervised by Jordi Catalan and Marisol Felip. The study area of this thesis is focused in the Pyrenean high mountain lakes with a particular emphasis in the lake Redon, and the main goal is to analyze the changes in the microscopic communities at the boundary between nitrogen and phosphorus limitations. These high mountain oligotrophic lakes are largely limited by phosphorus greatly due to high nitrogen deposition of the last decades; however the situation may be reversing because of increased phosphorus deposition.Assuming that changes in the limiting nutrient should imply huge rearrangements in the microscopic communities, we use microscopic and molecular techniques to analyze the changes in planctonic and the epilithic biofilm communities.  

Research Interest

To analyze the changes in the microscopic communities at the boundary between nitrogen and phosphorus limitations