School of Freshwater Sciences

Freshwater Colloquium – Small Organisms Big Impact: Microbial Insights from the Mississippi River to Caribbean Reefs
2026-04-27 15:00 - 15:50 (America/Chicago) | School of Freshwater Sciences Ballroom, First Floor, 600 E Greenfield Avenue, Milwaukee, WI, 53204
Join the School of Freshwater Sciences for a Colloquium with guest speaker: Dr. Michael Henson
Microorganisms drive nutrient cycling, regulate ecosystem productivity, and respond quickly to environmental change, making them strong indicators of ecosystem health. In this seminar, we will discuss how microbial community structure and assembly reveal patterns of environmental organization across large spatial scales, and how shifts in core microbial taxa reflect underlying ecological processes rather than simple changes in nutrient levels, using the Mississippi River as a case study. These patterns provide insight into how large rivers process and transform nutrients during downstream transport. We will also cover ongoing work on Caribbean coral reefs, where a pathogenic ciliate has contributed to widespread mass mortality of sea urchins. By combining environmental sequencing with cultured isolates, we are exploring how microbial dynamics intersect with disease emergence in a rapidly changing ocean. Together, these studies show how microbial communities, from a continental-scale river network to tropical reef ecosystems, serve as a powerful lens for understanding environmental change.
Michael Henson is an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Northern Illinois University and leads the Aquatic Microbiology Lab. His research focuses on how microbial communities respond to environmental change and how those responses scale to influence ecosystem processes. He takes an integrative approach that spans cultivation, physiology, and genomics, linking organismal traits to patterns observed at ecosystem scales.

He earned his PhD at Louisiana State University, where he developed a foundation in microbial ecology and began combining molecular tools with environmental data to study community structure and function. He then completed postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California and the University of Chicago, where he further integrated cultivation-based approaches with genomic and ecological analyses to better connect microbial physiology to ecosystem dynamics.

His current research spans both freshwater and marine systems. In the Mississippi River, he investigates how microbial communities maintain strong spatial structure despite temporal variability, and how changes in water quality alter key taxa and ecosystem function. In marine systems, his work focuses on host–microbe interactions and disease, particularly through research on the ciliate pathogen affecting sea urchins, where our lab is working to link ecological changes with disease outbreak patterns.

Outside the lab, he enjoys gardening with his husband, traveling, and spending time outdoors backpacking and camping. At home, they share their lives and home with their two dogs, Tyler and Emmy.
This presentation is open to students, faculty, staff, alumni and the public.
