Things are starting to work a little better around here. I have switched to keeping the jellyfish in an environmental chamber so they are always at 12 degrees celsius and setting a regular feeding schedule of Artemia (brine shrimp) nauplii means the jellies are much happier and more cooperative in the lab. This means that my workflow in the lab has become more regular and I can depend on getting fertilized eggs within a certain window of time. I have even gotten some of the planula, the larval stage of the jellyfish, to settle and form hydroids, the immobile and colonial phase. See my last post for a review of jellyfish life cycles.
All of our experiments work better with fresh animals. I read today that Phialidium gregarium, “particularly during late spring and summer, this tiny jelly is so abundant as to appear to be filling the ocean.” This year, for whatever reason, this has not been the case. Next week we will get to present our research to the public at the Charleston Marine Life Center (CMLC), a natural history museum that serves as the Oregon Institute for Marine Biology’s public outreach. It should be fun to come up with a way to show my research to a general audience. Often when I go looking for jellyfish there are families fishing or crabbing from the docks and inevitably the kids (and the adults) get curious about the jellyfish. So, I guess I’ve already started getting some practice communicating my science to non scientists.
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AuthorMy name is Philip Aspinall, and I am a student at Sierra College in Grass Valley, California. The first time I peered into a microscope and found an entire, complex, beautiful world below the visible, I was transfixed. I am thankful for George von Dassow and Svetlana Maslakova for allowing me to work in their lab, and to Geroge for his generosity with his time and for being my mentor this summer. Archives
August 2019
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