This has been our last week here for the summer and we spent it finishing the guide, printing the guide, and presenting our posters. We have been extremely busy but it has been so exciting to see our work from the last nine weeks come together into our final products. We processed 120 individual worms and obtained DNA sequences for 92 individuals. We found 36 species in total, 22 of which were hoplonemerteans, and each received a card in the identification guide. We found four nemertean species that are new to science, two species that have not been found in Oregon before, and an adult individual of a species that has not been found in the adult form before. It has taken an immense amount of work to get this far, but it has been entirely worth it and I have learned so much in the process of making our identification guide.
I want to use the rest of my final blog post to thank everyone that helped make this one of the most amazing summers of my life. I have been genuinely happy here and am utterly grateful for this experience. Svetlana has been a truly amazing mentor and has taught me so much about nemerteans, marine biology, and science in general. I am so incredibly thankful to have spent my summer working in her lab and hope to follow in her footsteps to become a researcher one day. It has also been a privilege and a pleasure to work with Christina, the graduate student in our lab, who helped me work through the little kinks of research I did not see coming and readily welcomed me into the lab. Likewise, I have loved working with Frances Conable, an undergraduate in the lab, in a variety of situations throughout the summer. Additionally, Rebecca, my fellow lab mate, helped the many hours we spent in the lab fly by. Even the tedious and stressful aspects of worm dissection and photography were fun thanks to her. Although science may be perceived as dry and sterile, the people I worked with this summer have been integral in shaping my experience in research and contributed to it for the best. I want to thank Richard Emlet and Maya Wolf-Watts for running this wonderful REU program and helping us edit and revise our posters, as well as Nicole Nakata for acting as an impeccable REU den mother throughout the program. I also want to give a shout out to my fellow interns, who have been some of the nerdiest, funniest, and most enjoyable people I have ever met. My summer would not have been the same without them. Finally, I want to acknowledge my family and friends for their endless support, as well as my blog readers for learning about my work. After I leave OIMB, I will return to my home institution and continue pursuing biology to eventually attend graduate school and earn a PhD. This program has solidified my resolve to pursue a career in scientific research and has exposed me to marine biology, which has become a particularly interesting aspect of biology to me. I would not be surprised if I end up studying marine biology for the rest of my life; but whatever I do with my career, I know for sure that I will look back on my time here at OIMB fondly and as a fundamental step in my path to becoming a professional scientist.
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AuthorI am Jacob and am from Rancho Cucamonga, CA. I am a rising Junior at Pomona College in Claremont, CA who has never studied marine biology in school before but has always been interested in it. I am incredibly excited to spend the next two months working in Svetlana Maslakova’s lab studying Nemertean (ribbon worm) biodiversity through genetic analysis. Archives
August 2021
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