Catherine Davis
North Carolina State University, NC·Earth & Environmental Science
Much of what we know about past climate comes from foraminifera. These single-celled marine organisms build tiny calcium carbonate shells that record the chemistry of the water they grew in.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
Chemistry
- Topics
planktic foraminifera
plankton
rhizaria
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Measure which particle types planktic foraminifera collected off U.S. coasts gather, how quickly they clump them, and how this changes the sinking and carbon export of marine snow, using laboratory cultures.
- Use geochemical tracers to test whether interactions with marine snow change the chemistry of foraminiferal organic matter and shells.
- Apply compound-specific isotope analysis of amino acids (CSI-AA) to shell-bound organic matter to infer foraminiferal depth habitat, diet and symbiosis, checked against plankton tows and sediment traps.
- Test how well amino acids survive in Miocene, Eocene and Cretaceous foraminifera fossils using amino acid ratios and racemization, and reconstruct the feeding ecology of extinct species.
- Build a 30-year record of foraminifera species from Santa Barbara Basin sediment traps and a sediment core to measure how fast and why species mixes change with climate.
- Test how seasonal changes affect shell-based climate records and whether sediment-trap samples match the underlying sediment, using stable isotope and trace element analyses.
More about the research
When they die, their shells pile up as fossils on the seafloor. Reading those records correctly requires knowing how living foraminifera behave: where they live, what they eat, whether they host symbionts, and how their numbers shift with climate. Foraminifera also matter in today's ocean, which moves carbon from surface waters to the deep sea. Three collaborative projects link the living ecology of these organisms to the carbon cycle and to the fossil record.
Why it matters
Knowing how much carbon foraminifera help send to the deep ocean could improve estimates of ocean carbon storage and its role in regulating climate. More accurate readings of their fossil shells, including corrections for diet, depth and seasonal changes, could reduce errors in records of past ocean climate. These records help scientists place today's rapid carbon dioxide rise in context and predict ocean change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: Uncovering the role of planktic foraminifera in marine snow formation and ocean carbon export
NSF · Sep 2026 – Aug 2029
Collaborative Research: Constraining Planktic Foraminiferal Ecology Using Compound Specific Isotope Analysis of Amino Acids
NSF · Aug 2023 – Jul 2027
Collaborative Research: Three decades of foraminiferal assemblages in the Santa Barbara Basin provide a link between present and past
NSF · Jul 2022 – May 2027
Closest labs
Yair Rosenthal
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Earth & Environmental Science
Reconstruct movements of the Southern Westerly Winds during the Holocene and five earlier interglacials (MIS 5e, 9e, 11c, 13, 19) using Chilean Margin sediments from site J1001.
Brittany Hupp
George Mason University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
Build records of single-shell foraminifera chemistry and shape across the onset of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) at IODP Site U1580, where shells were not dissolved by ocean acidification.
Patrick Rafter
University of South Florida, FL·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether Indian Ocean bottom water was unusually old during the last ice age by comparing the radiocarbon ages of fossil shells with sediment ages in four new cores from across the basin.
The school
North Carolina State University: 40 labs on PI Pages, $717M a year on research, 603 research doctorates a year.
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