Evolutionary Fish Ecology

Max Zavell started as a PhD student in our lab in fall 2020, after graduating in May 2020 with his Bachelor from the University of Rhode Island. Max worked experimentally on questions of coastal fish and climate change. In addition to Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia), his work on Black Sea Bass (Centropristis striata) has broken new ground for our lab. Growth, physiology, and sex determination of this northernmost grouper species are of great interest, given its recent, explosive increase in abundance in Long Island Sound and the larger northwest Atlantic shelf. Over two fall and winter seasons, Max conducted ambitious long-term rearing experiments on juvenile and adult Black Sea Bass to study how overwintering could be the key to understand the species particularly pronounced increase in Long Island Sound. He was particularly adept at mentoring and integrating undergraduate students (Matthew Mouland, Devan Barnum), was an active member of the graduate student community in our department and helped in many aspects of other research.

Kelli Mosca received a Bachelors degree from the University of New Haven in spring 2017 and started in January 2020 as a graduate student in the Fish Ecology Lab. She had already become a dedicated seasonal worker at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CTDEEP), where she assisted particularly with the sturgeon monitoring program. This has made her the perfect candidate to work on our CT SeaGrant project to look at age and telemetry data of Atlantic Sturgeon in Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River. Kelli worked hard and independently, mastering not only the technical aspects of the project but also the challenges imposed by the COVID pandemic that sadly marked her entire time as a graduate student. Undeterred, Kelli graduated with her Masters on 21 March 2022, presenting her thesis titled"Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus) Growth and Habitat Use in the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound" (Link to recording).

 

Kelli was an inspirational and cherished member of the Baumann lab, and her dedication and continued work for CTDEEP were rewarded by an offer for a CTDEEP Fishery Biologist I position, which she has wholeheartedly accepted. Congratulations Kelli, and all the best for the next steps in your career!You can read more about Kelli from this UConn Today Alumni profile (7 May 2022)

• Mosca, K.C. Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus) Growth and Habitat Use in the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. University of Connecticut 2022, MS Thesis.

A manuscript derived from Kelli's thesis research was submitted to Environmental Biology of Fishes

• Mosca, K.C., Savoy, T., R. Benway, J., Ingram, E.C., Schultz, E.T., and Baumann, H.
  Age structure and seasonal movement patterns of Atlantic sturgeon aggregating in eastern Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River
  Environmental Biology of Fishes (in review)

You can reach Kelli now at kelli.mosca@ct.gov

Callie Concannon started in our lab in fall 2018 after getting her Bachelors from the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth. For her Master's thesis research, she pursued an important but tricky question whether high CO₂ environments result in measurable changes in the reproductive output (fecundity, oocyte size) of fishes. In summer of 2018, she took over a long-term rearing experiment on Atlantic silversides, and then used macroscopic and histological analyses to diligently examine the males and females from each CO₂ and temperature-specific treatment.

Callie graduated in December 2020 after presenting and submitting her thesis that is publicly available from the Connecticut Archives:

• Concannon, C.A. Whole Life-Cycle CO₂ × Temperature Effects on Fecundity and Oocyte Recruitment in the Atlantic Silverside (Menidia menidia). University of Connecticut 2020, MS Thesis.

Emma Cross joined our team in September 2017, after receiving her PhD from Cambridge University, UK, in August 2016. Her previous work focused on the CO₂-sensitivity of polar and temperate brachiopods, a group of ancient, sessile calcifiers that build large shells but are unrelated to mollusks. In our lab, Emma transitioned to working with fish, particularly Atlantic silversides, testing how fluctuating pH and oxygen environments typical of nearshore environments affect early life survival and growth. Emma was also instrumental in all of our follow-up, ongoing work on sand lance sensitivity to ocean warming and acidification.

Emma was an incredible enrichment to our lab, and has now (September 2019) started her new faculty position as Assistant Professor in Coastal/Marine Science at Southern Connecticut State University (New Haven, CT). Her proximity will sure enable lots of collaborative work in the future!

Christopher Murray started his PhD at UConn/Avery Point in September 2014, after finishing his MS in May 2014 at Stony Brook University, NY. While building on his experience in ocean acidification research, for his PhD he studyied multi-stressor effects of OA and hypoxia on coastal marine fishes. He had an outstanding, large part in designing and building ALFiRiS, our automated larval fish rearing system in UConn Rankin Seawater lab. After 4 phenomenally productive years, Chris defended his PhD in December 2018 and graduated in May 2019 with this PhD from UConn.
His thesis titled

An experimental evaluation of the sensitivity of coastal marine fishers acidification, hypoxia, and warming

is publicly available at the OpenCommons Site of the UConn Library.

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After a productive post-doc on the west coast with the University of Washington (2019-2021), Chris wrote a successful NSF postdoctoral fellowship proposal and is thus currently working with Neel Aluru (Aluru Lab) at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, taking Atlantic silverside research to new levels. And he recently became a co-PI on our new sand lance grant, thereby ensuring further scientific productivity together.

Chris can be reached at christopher.murray@whoi.edu

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Publications of Chris from his time at UConn:

• Murray, C.S. and Baumann, H. (2020) Are long-term growth responses to elevated pCO₂ sex-specific in fish? PLOS One 15:e0235817
• Cross, E.L., Murray, C.S., and Baumann, H. (2019) Diel and tidal pCO₂ × O₂ fluctuations provide physiological refuge to a coastal forage fish. Scientific Reports 9:18146
• Murray, C.S., Wiley, D., and Baumann, H. (2019) High sensitivity of a keystone forage fish to elevated CO₂ and temperature. Conservation Physiology 7:1-12
• Murray, C.S. and Baumann, H. (2018) You better repeat it: complex temperature × CO₂ effects in Atlantic silverside offspring revealed by serial experimentation Diversity 10:69
• Murray, C.S., Fuiman, L., and Baumann, H. (2017) Consequences of elevated CO₂ exposure across multiple life stages in a coastal forage fish
  ICES Journal of Marine Science 74:1051-1061
• Baumann, H., Parks, E.M., and Murray, C.S. (2018) Starvation rates in larval and juvenile Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia) are unaffected by high CO₂ conditions
  Marine Biology 165:75-83

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[ocean acidification, hypoxia, Atlantic silverside, sand lance, transgenerational effects, climate change]
christopher.murray@whoi.edu | Chris' publications

Deanna Elliott is a junior at Arizona State University who joined the Baumann lab in summer 2019 as our third NSF-REU student. Deanna has experimented with locusts before, but now became an expert fish rearer. For her REU-project she reared Atlantic silverside larvae under different feeding regimes to create fish of different body sizes and then analyzed them for trace levels of mercury in their tissue. She tested the hypothesis that mercury concentrations in fish can be used as a proxy for ingestion rates, which are important to trophic ecosystem models to perform better.Great job, Deanna!

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[Atlantic silverside, Menidia menidia, mercury, ingestion rates]
dbellio2@asu.edu

Julie Pringle started her MS in the Baumann lab in September 2016 and graduated in December 2018. During her time, Julie painstakingly investigated the growth and selective survival in juvenile Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia) collected in fall 2015 in Mumford Cove. She was the first student in our lab to fully use our Image Analysis system, counting more than 30,000 individual increments in 300 of her selected specimens.

Her research shed new light on a particularly intriguing aspect of silverside life history; i.e., that this species exhibits temperature-dependent sex determination. Under laboratory conditions, colder temperatures produce more females than warmer temperatures, which should lead to females being born earlier during the season than males. However, Julie's study showed that survivors at the end of the growing season consist of more females than expected and that those females were larger NOT because they were born earlier, but because they grew significantly faster than their male conspecifics.

During her time, Julie never shied away from selflessly helping other students and the lab with tasks unrelated to her thesis, something we truly loved about her and will always be grateful for. She also became a brilliant Teaching Assistant and was a loved and active member of the graduate student community.

Julie has moved back to Martha's Vineyard, where she started her new position as Field Science Coordinator for the local Great Pond Foundation.

Julie says:"There's a really an amazing network of wildlife biologists at various organizations on the Vineyard, and I'm very excited to be working side-by-side with so many, who originally encouraged me to become a scientist. I'll be doing field work, but also data analysis and working with interns, so it will be a fun combination of different types of work."

Julie's Masters Thesis "Sex-Specific Hatch and Growth Patterns in Young-of-the-Year Atlantic Silversides (Menidia menidia, Atherinopsidae) from Mumford Cove, Connecticut" is accessible via the OpenCommons Site of the UConn Library.Julie's thesis research has recently been published in Marine Ecology Progress Series:

• Pringle, J.W. and Baumann, H. (2019) Otolith-based growth reconstructions in young-of-year Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia) and their implications for sex-selective survivalMarine Ecology Progress Series 632:193-204

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[Atlantic silverside, climate change, Mumford Cove, otolith microstructure analysis, growth, selective survival]
julie.pringle@uconn.edu

Sydney Stark  joined our lab from June to August 2018 as our second REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) student in collaboration with Mystic Aquarium. Sydney is a Junior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and interested in aspects of marine conservation and effects of climate change.Sydney spend her summer testing a prototype of a light trap designed to catch larval and juvenile fish and used it to infer seasonal patterns of ichthyoplankton abundance in nearshore Long Island Sound. In just a short period of time, Sydney became a true ichthyoplankton taxonomist and found that light traps truly work in our waters. Well done Sydney, and all the best for the next career steps!In her hometown, Sydney's REU project already received coverage by the local newspaper. See here!

[Long Island Sound, ichthyoplankton, light trap, otolith, Atlantic silverside, Menhaden]
sks7111@uncw.edu

Check out some of Sydney's best larval fish pictures below:

Jacob Snyder joined the lab in September 2015 and graduated in December 2017 with his Master's degree. For his Master's thesis, Jake painstakingly took it upon himself to retrieve and digitize the 40+ year time series of environmental observations from Project Oceanology. This non-profit ocean literacy organization has educated middle and high school students on boat trips to nearby estuarine sites for decades. For the first time, his work allowed a quantitative evaluation of these data and glimpses into the abiotic and biotic changes in nearshore waters of Eastern Long Island Sound.

A research paper based on Jake's thesis was published in March 2019 in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Environmental Research

• Snyder, J.T., Whitney, M.M., Dam, H.G., Jacobs, M.W., and Baumann, H. (2019). Citizen science observations reveal rapid, multi-decadal ecosystem changes in eastern Long Island Sound. Marine Environmental Research 146: 80-88

His Masters Thesis "Analysis of a Newly Digitized Long-Term Dataset of Environmental Observations from Long Island Sound" is accessible via the OpenCommons Site of the UConn Library.

 

During his time at the Baumann lab, Jake also conducted experiments on potential maternal effects and their influence on offspring CO₂ sensitivity, published 2018 in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology

• Snyder, J.T., Murray, C.S., and Baumann, H. (2018) Potential for maternal effects on offspring CO₂ sensitivities in the Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia). Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 499:1-8

[ocean acidification, hypoxia, Atlantic silverside, climate change, long-term data set, Long Island Sound]
jacob.snyder@uconn.edu | Jake's website