Viviana Mazzei

I am a PhD student in the Periphyton Lab at Florida International University in Miami, Fl. where we study periphyton communities in the Florida Everglades and similar carbonate wetlands in the Caribbean. For my dissertation project I am studying changes in benthic algal species composition and relative abundance along a simultaneous salinity and phosphorous gradient in the Everglades in order to understand how these two factors influence community assembly. I am broadly interested in algal community ecology in both freshwater and marine systems and its application to environmental assessment as well as to the development of community ecology theory. I want to understand the patterns and drivers of algal community assembly in order to understand how anthropogenic activities influence algal communities and what are the consequences of changes in these communities on the ecosystems they inhabit. I am also interested in how changes in these communities can be used as an indicator of environmental change.