NSF

Hannes back in Chile to repeat common garden experiment!

25. September 2025. I have been asked by quite a few people (on both hemispheres), why I had to go again to Chile, to the same place, the same marine station, to repeat the same experiment from two years ago? Did the first fail somehow? No, not at all. The first experiment yielded really intriguing data suggesting similar local adaptation patterns in southern compared to northern hemisphere silversides.

But the catch is that one year could be a coincidence. To make statistically robust inferences about the nature of local adaptation in Chilean silversides, good science simply demands another, a second independent data set of observations. Even more so, because (i) the adaptation strength here is likely subtle, and (ii) some treatments and populations were indeed less successful the first time around.

And so I'm here again. The place where I spent 6 months during my sabbatical feels wonderfully familiar - despite being thousands of miles away from home. The setting September sun pours gold over the halfmoon-shaped Coliumo Bay. Spring is in the air here, but the little beach town is still mostly void of the summer crowds. I wander through the streets, recognize the stray dogs, and many of the people in this little village say they remember me and my family from two years ago.

In the marine station, the experiment is now being set up in a different location. Inside the aquarium, which is climate-controlled and therefore more suitable. It took us two years to gain permission to move in, and I had to have custom tanks made to set it all up. Will it all be worth it?

Now time is really tight, the setup needs to be put together in just a few days, because in the low latitudes of Chile's north, the spawning season of pejerrey has already begun. Fingers crossed.

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On 26 September 2025, Claudio Gallardo flexes off some tank material to make it fit

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Tight, but this is what will have to do!

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Plumbing begins in the Aquarium of the Marine Station in Dichato

[Lab video] How a new silverside experiment starts

29 June 2018. A new experiment with Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia) starts and as usual, it’s an all hand on deck operation. This time, we have Chris Tsang shadowing all of us and Emma professionally explaining the process.

Have a look for yourself!

[Lab news] Chris and Hannes attend ICES Annual Science conference

ASC 2017 poster

On 19-21 September 2017, Chris Murray and Hannes Baumann traveled to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to attend the ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea) Annual Science Conference in order to present our ongoing NSF and NOAA funded research on potential ocean acidification effects in Atlantic Silversides and Northern Sand lance. Due to Hurricane Irma, which had impacted all of Florida just a week earlier, it was a great relief that the conference could actually be successfully held.

Together with Chris Chambers (NOAA), Ian Bradbury (DFO, Canada), and Richard McBride (NOAA), Hannes convened a theme session titled “Patterns, sources, and consequences of intraspecific variation in responses of marine fauna to environmental stressors“.

Chris gave a talk and a poster during this session, which was well received and thus a worthwhile exposure for Chris and our lab’s research.


  • Murray, C. S. and Baumann H. 2017. Growth costs of high CO2 environments in a marine fish: importance of feeding methodology. Talk.
  • Murray, C. S., Wiley, D., and Baumann H. 2017. A preliminary study testing the effects of high CO2 on the early life stages of the northern sand lance Ammodytes dubius. Poster.