Daniel Conley, professor of biogeochemistry at Lund University, has been awarded the grant for a five-year project on diatoms in the ocean. Diatoms have a significant impact on the global biogeochemical cycles of carbon, silicon dioxide and other nutrients that regulate ocean productivity and, ultimately, the planet’s climate. Every day these small unicellular organisms absorb significant amounts of carbon from the air, more than double the amount released by the human use of fossil fuels.

In this new research project, Daniel Conley will investigate how the early evolution of diatoms approximately 250 million years ago affected the global cycles of both carbon and silicon, as well as other nutrients.

“We will contribute new insights into how the spread of diatoms had a fundamental impact on the ocean’s environment”, says Daniel Conley.

Until now, the research community has not investigated this chain of events due to a lack of discoveries of diatom fossils in older bedrock. Instead, the focus has been on the more common fossil impressions of diatoms from the past 66 million years. However, molecular clocks indicate a much earlier development of diatoms, as early as after the large-scale mass extinction that affected most life on the planet approximately 250 million years ago.

“Now we are going to search for evidence of the early evolution of diatoms and also calculate the overall impact they had on global cycles”, says Daniel Conley.

Conley’s research on global cycles is now being rewarded for the second time in a short period. Last autumn, he was awarded just over SEK 34 million from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation for further work on global silicon cycles.