Hi again! We are hitting the back third of the program here at OIMB, and boy is time going by fast. Monday of week 6 consisted of setting up a rough draft of my poster in preparation for the symposium at the end of the program. I have also spent a large portion of the week processing photos. As you may recall from previous blog posts, I am looking at the effects of sunlight on sand dollar pigmentation, therefore image processing software has proven itself essential.
On Wednesday, I took my fourth set of pictures for measuring sand dollar color. I was especially eager to get this set of photos processed due to the mishap that happened last week. (In an attempt to remove sand from the surface of my animals to get them picture ready, I mistakenly power washed some of the pigment clean off.) Therefore, I was eager to get them under the lens this week and see how they responded to that rough cleaning. Though I have not yet completed the average blur on the pictures from this week, I feel it is fair to say that the larger sand dollars escaped relatively unscathed (apart from one animal), while the smaller sand dollars suffered 9 casualties with more dead ones in the light treatment. Despite the untimely demise of some of the sand dollars (it's survival data!), I feel that my experiment is going pretty well! There seems to be a significant color change in many of the larger sand dollars in the light treatment, which is what I predicted (and exactly as I’d hoped). In addition to the color change, I hypothesize that the pigmentation developed by the animals in the light treatment will come at a cost, which in this case would be growth. Therefore, I used different software (ImageJ) to measure the diameter of the sand dollars in the photos. This is accomplished by taking a known length in the photo (the grey scale) and using that to measure sand dollars in the image. After analysis of diameter vs. coloration, I expect to observe a smaller change in size for the animals in the light treatment compared to the dark treatment. In short, I believe that the effort put forth by the animal to produce a deeper pigmentation to protect against the effects of sunlight will result in a slower growth. In addition to my weekly data collection and analysis, the REU cohort took a trip to the Charleston Marine Life Center. Here, we partook in a seminar which discussed how to communicate to a broader audience (i.e. people outside of the scientific community). The goal of this workshop was to get us prepared for our outreach event which will take place virtually next weekend, July 31 from 1:00-2:30 pm (Link). After the workshop, we were free to wander around and explore the CMLC, which I highly recommend to anyone in the area. The CMLC will re-open to the public on August 11. I am eager to volunteer there next quarter and get an exclusive behind the scenes look at all the critters!
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Alondra Germán-CastañedaAnother California transplant who is now calling Oregon her home. I have spent the last year living in Eugene while attending University of Oregon on main campus. This internship will kick off my 3 terms at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology and conclude my undergraduate career! |
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