Eight weeks of work have come to an end, and we are working summarize a summer of work in a poster. That is a lot to fit in a 35x40 inch space, especially when you have to fit a huge phylogenetic tree and pictures of all of the worms that we worked on. I am currently taking a break from inching photos across a computer screen one by one to write this blog post. While the process of making a scientific poster is a bit long and frustrating, we will be able to take our posters home to keep and (hopefully) present at conferences or undergraduate poster sessions. It is also rewarding to see all of your hard work in put together at the end of a project. Last Saturday, we had the chance to practice communicating our research to the general public. Each lab set up a table at the Charleston Marine Life Center, a museum/aquarium across the street from campus. Adrian and I brought a few different local species of nemerteans to show visitors. We talked about the what ribbon worms are and their importance, but we also discussed marine biodiversity in general. The majority of marine species have not yet been described, and that is part of what makes our work to discover new worm species so important. We need to know what is out there if we want to understand how each animal contributes to an ecosystem, and how we can protect it. Another benefit of learning what is in our oceans is that we may find something useful. Nemerteans, for example, produce mucus that is toxic to their prey, but those toxins have been studied for potential medical uses. It was fun to see that people are interested in the research we are doing here. At the end of last week, we visited a new tidepooling location called Qochyax Island. The tide was very low and we found all sorts of worms, algae, isopods, and other organisms. The tidepools were teeming with life.
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AuthorHi! I’m Megan Powers, a fourth year Biology and Environmental Sciences student at the University of Iowa. Throughout my summer at OIMB, I will be working with the Maslakova lab to assess Nemertean diversity in the Caribbean. Archives
August 2019
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