Month: May 2019

[Lab news] Hannes, Chris and Emma at the 43rd Larval Fish Conference!

Posted on May 25, 2019May 26, 2019 by Hannes Baumann

ChrisHannesEmma_web — Chris, Hannes, and Emma

CapFormentor3_web — Beautiful view from Mallorca’s most northern point, Cap Formentor

peterdominiquearildHannes_web — Peter Gronkjaer, Dominique Robert, Arild Folkvord, Hannes during the conference tour

25 May 2019. Hannes, Chris and Emma attended this years 43rd Annual Larval Fish Conference in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The event was hosted by IMEDEA’s Ignacio Catalan and colleagues and was attended by more than 140 participants. As usual, the small but international make-up of the meeting and made it into a memorable event of science, networking and seed for potential future collaborations. While Chris reported on our past experiments on factorial CO2 by O2 effects on Atlantic silverside early life stages, Emma presented the latest findings on our silverside experiments using computer-controlled CO2 and O2 co-fluctuations.

Before and after the conference, there was also some time to explore the beautiful island of Mallorca with its breathtaking mountain scenery and turquoise coves.

Chris and Emma’s presented:

Murray, C.S., Cross, E.L., and Baumann H. A factorial evaluation of the combined effects of acidification and hypoxia in Atlantic silverside offspring. Talk.

Cross, E.L., Murray, C.S. and Baumann H.Diel and tidal cycles of CO₂ and dissolved oxygen conditions provide physiological refuge to a coastal forage fish, Menidia menidia under acidification and hypoxia. Talk.

A special thanks to Lucas and Callie for holding the fort at home!

[Lab news] Callie attends UConn climate change symposium

Posted on May 13, 2019May 13, 2019 by Hannes Baumann

Climatestudents — UConn DMS students present their research (u.l. Kelly McGarry, u.r. Halle Berger, l.l. Sarah McCart, l.r. Alec Shub

By Callie Concannon. On April 30th, four graduate students from the Marine Science Department traveled to UConn, Storrs to present their research at UConn’s 2nd Climate Research Symposium cohosted by the Geology and Marine Science departments. The students were Kelly McGarry (Ph.D student; top left), Halle Berger (Master’s student; top right), Sarah McCart (Master’s student; bottom left) and Alec Shub (Master’s student; bottom right). Everyone’s presentations were well received, and Sarah McCart even won the graduate student poster competition!

The event featured two keynote speakers; Professor Margaret Rubega of UConn, and Professor Tim Cronin of MIT. Professor Rubega talked about science communication and how the scientific community could better communicate their climate change research to non-scientists without using overbearing jargon and too many words. Professor Cronin gave a speech on his past research on the suppression of Arctic air formation with climate warming.

McCart, S., Lund, D., Seeley, E., Asimov, P., Lewis, M., and Mudahy, A.L. Testing the sea level hypothesis with new results from the Pacific.
McGarry, K., Siedlecki, S., Alin, S., and Salisbury, J. Empirical models for estimating the carbonate system along the northeastern coast of the U.S.
Berger, H., Siedlecki, S., Matassa, C., Alin, S., Kaplan, I., Pilcher, D., and Newton, J. Using projections from regional oceanographic forecasts to assess the vulnerability of the Dungeness crab to climate change stressors.
Shub, A., Lund, D., and Mudahy, A.L., Does expansion of Antarctic bottom water result in storage of CO₂ in the abyssal Atlantic?

[Lab news] Emma turns 30 and starts a new silverside experiment!

Posted on May 8, 2019May 8, 2019 by Hannes Baumann

3 May 2019. It is Emma’s 30th birthday today, so naturally she celebrates it by starting a new, large experiment with Atlantic silversides, thus sharing her special day with more than 5,000 little embryos that are now developing in our system.

Like in our previous experiments, we are mimicking current and future coastal environments that fluctuate daily in CO2 and oxygen levels – thanks to our computer-controlled system that manipulates these levels in up to nine tanks simultaneously.

But this time, our additional goal is to keep track of sib-ship. We produced full sibs (same mother, same father), half-sibs (same mother or father, different father or mother) and unrelated individuals, and by keeping them separate we will later be able to calculate additive genetic variances in the various traits under different conditions (i.e., heritability) and examine trait correlations.

As usual, this could not be done by one person, so the entire lab helped preparing, seining, and fertilizing embryos on this frantic day. Great job all!