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CUSHING PRIZE

DAVID CUSHING PRIZE 2008

The prize honours the memory of David Cushing, Founding Editor of Journal of Plankton Research. It is awarded annually for the best paper by an early career stage scientist published in the journal during the previous year, where the first author is aged 35 or younger. The prize helps to foster the interesting and high quality papers by young scientists that David Cushing so actively supported.

The 2008 David Cushing Prize has been awarded to Catharina Alves-de-Souza for her paper, “Functional groups in marine phytoplankton assemblages dominated by diatoms in fjords of southern Chile” with co-authors María Teresa González, and José Luis Iriarte (J. Plankton Res., November 2008; 30: 1233 – 1243).

Catharina Alves-de-Souza


Catharina Alves-de-Souza is a 30-year-old Brazilian biologist. She started her scientific career in Brazil where she did her Master’s thesis, investigating the taxonomy of phytoplankton from brackish water systems. Catharina’s interests focus on the relationship between environmental factors and the different adaptive strategies of phytoplankton species and how they can be reflected in observed patterns of spatial and temporal distributions of phytoplankton communities in marine environments. She is currently doing her PhD at the University Austral de Chile, Valdivia, in the "Systematic and Ecology" Program, where she is investigating the "Relationship between DSP producer dinoflagellates and the accumulation of diarrhetic toxins in bivalves: importance of total phytoplankton and organic particulate material". Her thesis work addresses how emergent properties of the phytoplankton community, such as diversity and specific composition, associated with population dynamic of toxic dinoflagellates, could affect the flow of matter (in this case toxins) through trophic webs.