This week we finally went snorkeling! We needed S. purpuratus adults, so we dove and captured some for the experiments! The visibility was outstanding. I have been tackling some large projects, and in retrospect the final product should only require about a week or two worth of data, but the whole journey of refining my experiments to get polished, publishable data has been a grand task. So here’s a pro tip- if you have to count a million larvae, have as many people on microscopes as possible. We started out our experiments by having only one or two people on a microscope and then running an assembly line, everything set up for the scope viewer, and all they had to do was call out what they saw. “32 cells” “Another... Another ...” “...Blastula!” Would be Craig, Matt and I calling out cell stages during data collections. We found that with more helpers, suddenly, our work days were flying by in short hours. I got most people on board with the idea of making slide preparation much faster, too. It felt like a great accomplishment. Dropping the amount of time we took picking out 50 larvae for a slide, and reduced the amount of slides we had to prepare. This time saver, combined with the improvement of distributing lab helpers around each task wound up making data collection days go from 12 hours to 1. This was great, especially when nearly everyone there was volunteering their time to be there and help, they also seemed so much more enthusiastic to help clean up afterwards when lab days were shorter! This OIMB REU program has been a wonderful mix of scientific learning and I am coming out a better scientist because of it. My experience here has included building the important skills of assembling and directing teams of people, offering a happy attitude to spread throughout the lab, and making a professor happy with my work. I feel very fortunate to have had this experience, and can’t wait to apply my knowledge to future marine biology related work.
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AuthorMy name is Kaylee Wilkinson, I am both a student, and am currently employed by Lane Community College in their wet lab for marine biology research. I serve as a coral husbandry assistant and tank-scape artist. I enjoy sciences where you can dive into the "unknown", being in Craig Young's lab is perfect for such interests. I am thankful for Dr. Young and his graduate students to have taken me in as an REU intern this summer, they have been very enjoyable to work with! Archives
August 2019
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