Acknowledgements

I'm immensely grateful to all who have or are working with me on this research. I want to give a special shout-out to Jessa Garibay-Yayen, who has been such an amazing help in so many aspects of this work. She was also the one who designed this website. So please check her work out here.

I would also like to thank the tireless efforts of María Granados Presa, who has worked many dedicated hours as a lab technician on the mass mortality event projects.

Special thanks to Olesya Kolmakova and Jordan Richard for giving so much time to helping answer all my questions, and to Sebastian Rock, who is always up for late-night sample processing grinds.

And of course, thanks to my supervisor, David Aldridge, the Aquatic Ecology Group, and countless others.

I would also like to thank the primary funders of my work so far, the Whitten Studentship and Woolf Fisher Trust. Without you, none of this would have been possible!