Day 16 - Finally, some of the "fun stuff"

You may have noticed that the posting so far have been dominated by topics like life in mud, sand particle size, and field trips to rocky shores, estuaries, etc.  Now that we have completed the planned field trips students are free to use the additional time to carry out research, travel to the field to collect data, and do science.

We will continue to have class meetings everyday, but the topics will focus on things that we cannot observe simply by taking a pre-planned outing.  Today was the first such class topic - "The Nekton".  Just FYI, nekton are animals that are big enough and strong enough swimmers to overcome tides, waves, and currents.    These are generally the kinds of animals that nature shows about the ocean are made of.

In the morning we spent about 90 mins discussing principles and adaptations for life in water for these large animals.  Then in the afternoon we spent about another 90 minutes discussing life history strategies of fishes.  Now do you wish you were here!?  :-)

After dinner we had our weekly discussion of scientific papers students have been reading, and at the risk of you nodding off to sleep, here are VERY brief summaries of what students shared:

1) Kristin - a paper about the effects of killer whales switching to preying on sea otters in the Gulf of Alaska
2) Jessica - a paper about phytoplankton in the flood plain of the Sacramento River as it makes its way toward the San Francisco Bay estuary.
3) Daniel - a paper about the embryonic development of the red sea slug Rostanga pulchra
4) Dalla - a paper describing the food web of the Ross Sea ecosystem in Antarctica and relationships between predator mouth size and preferred prey size
5) Mackenzie - a paper about the development of another sea slug, actually done by the director of OIMB
6) Elysa - a paper about a sea slug that eats algae but does not digest the chloroplasts.  Instead the sea slug keeps the chloroplasts and uses them for their own benefit.  Solar powered sea slugs?
7) Bailey - a paper on seasonal influences on phytoplankton populations
8) Tony - a paper on the dynamics of battle between different clones of the sea anemone Anthopleura elegantissima
9) Patrick - a paper on the behavior of intertidal hermit crabs
10) Lindsey - a paper on the effects of elevated water temperature on respiration in reef fishes
11) Tyson - a paper on the behavioral ecology of hermit crabs
12) Blake - a brief report on a dissertation on crab development and a student project paper about whether tide pool fish called sculpins can change their color in relation to background color

It was a good day.

There were no misadventures, and the research is moving forward.  Tony and Daniel spend the rest of the evening working on statistical analysis of their data.  Elysa and Mackenzie spent their time searching the literature to see if anyone had previously done what they are doing - embryonic development of sea slugs.

And that's a wrap.