Hello Readers! It is already week 8 and the program is coming to end. Much of this week was spend collecting any last bits of data and putting our research posters together. Which I must say is quite a tedious process. Much more goes into it than simply slapping a few graphs and pictures on it. We’ve all been working hard on providing sufficient information on a complex topic while simultaneously being as concise as possible. While the process may be strenuous, it provides you with time to sit down and reflect on all the work that went into getting to this point. That overstuffed folder full of notes and numbers soon becomes comprehendible. Now that they are complete I’m really excited to see all of our final works in print! This coming up week all of the REU interns will get the chance to show off all of our hard work at the Charleston Marine Life Center. I think that it’s really great that we will be given the opportunity to share what we have been doing with the public. After all, what is research worth if you can’t share it with others? Between all the work we’ve been putting in the interns found some time to escape for a bit. We took a very scenic drive up the river to the Golden Falls and saw the most spectacular waterfall! The top of it formed an undercut cliff that caused the water drip down over us like a never ending shower. It was a great stress reliever to go outside and adventure with everyone. I’m going to greatly miss this place and everyone here next week. I will defiantly have to return on day.
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We are nearing the end! There are only two weeks left in the program and it is time to begin wrapping up our projects and to put together our research posters. Fortunately I have the majority of my preliminary data already, I’m only waiting on a few broods of nauplii to molt into cyprids so that they can be measured. I have already begun to construct graphs showing temporal progression through instars to include in my poster. For those who may not have read last week’s blog, I am measuring the larvae at various stages to see if a dimorphism in size exist among male and female larvae. From what I have observed so far, all of the broods have the same sized larvae. This suggest one of two things, either there is no difference in size of the two sexes or every brood that I have measured over the past seven weeks have all been one sex. Initially both seem high unlikely. All the literature on rhizocephalan larvae that I have read says that all known species have different sizes larvae for males and females. Size is predetermined during egg development; mother’s make eggs of males bigger than those of females due to their different reproductive roles. The idea that this one species is novel lacking differences in offspring size would complicate its reproductive pattern and seem rather unlikely. The later idea of parasites making eggs of one sex also seemed highly unlikely as well. If there is a 50% chance of a brood being either male of female then at least one brood should be an outlier in the data, however this is not the case. This perplexed me for a while until Richard came across a study that showed that sex determination is seasonal. In the paper the species being studied showed that the smaller females predominated from June to late September while the large males where occurred during the rest of the year. If the species that I am studying exhibits similar temporal trends this would explain why all of the larvae I have cultured are the same size. If this where to in fact be the case it still leaves me unable to determine weather mine are male or female. I would have to sample year round to see if size varies throughout the year. There is also the question of what about the time of year dictates males or females. If there is an environmental cue then sampling from larvae cultured within the lab may not be representative of what is occurring out in the field. It seems as if every question answered just propagates ten more.
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