MoLES PhD student Caitlin de Vries has published the first paper from her PhD in Biogeosciences, co-authored by Dr Mel Sandells, Dr Matt Davey, Dr Gary Caldwell and Dr Ottavio Croze. Entitled Snow algae on the move – biased motility and snowpack interaction from a biophysics perspective, the paper provides a wide-ranging survey on what is known about algae that swim in snow, from the viewpoint of biological physics. They explore what is known about how algae interact with snow crystals, and how their swimming is biased by environmental cues, such as light, gravity, melt flow, and chemica and thermal gradients. As well as putting together this excellent review of the field, Caitlin also took these stunning SEM pictures of the bi-flagellated Antarctic snow algae Chlorominima (left) and Limnomonas (right).

You can find the paper here: https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/23/6835/2026/.