Harmful Algae Blog

Just having rest during a very hard practical session; I have read this post on Tom Roud’s blog and I must confess he’s right I am an experimentalist phd student. I mean, I spend my time at the lab, working on algal culturing or chemistry. I don’t really work on modelling phytoplankton communities, as an exemple. I just stay on my diatom’s model and try to make it produce more and more toxins. Perhaps I’ll contribute to better understand Pseudo-nitzschia’s toxicology ! But I don’t purpose theorical models - not yet.

Sometimes I feel like a famer. I take care of my crops and pray they will grow better and produce more ! I spend my time preparing my soil (culture media ! Agar plates seem like soil, aren’t they ? ) and stocking my seeds, cleaning my farm and waiting for good conditions (cleaned culture chamber and operational bioreactors !). So, when my experiment is on the good way, I feel satisfaction; as a good farmer feels during the harvest.

Well, I think tom’s story is very interesting, as theorists work on conceptual models, waiting for the “great idea”, an exciting suggestion that they will discuss more and more. When their bottle is empty, they restart thinking with this headache pain of their last drunkenness. Theoricists are useful, of course, and experimentalists need them. Their way is clearly linked. As a farmer keeps seeds for next spring, theoricist need always new seeds from experiments. Do you remember La Fontaine’s poem “la cigale et la fourmi” ?