Time is a tricky thing, in some ways the last nine weeks feel like they went by in a blink. Other times, I think of all I have learned and experienced and it feels as though I have been here forever. It was a challenge to complete, print and laminate the identification guide for Nemerteans worms of Oregon on time but as a team we pulled it off (at least the 1st edition)! It had taken a lot of collaboration, problem solving and sometimes thinking out of the box but what could have been a stressful situation was actually challenging and fun because of the attitudes, patience and persistence of our team. My experience here has cemented my love of science and confirmed that this is the type of work I want to spend my time doing. I especially love the biodiversity surveys and look forward to using my newfound skills in the future.
I want to say thank you to my mentor, Dr. Svetlana Maslakova and her graduate student, Christina Ellison for their endless patience to our many questions and their willingness to always share their knowledge and proper procedures in regards to field work, lab work and data processing. Completing a modern biodiversity survey from start to finish has been an amazing learning experience. I also want to thank Richard, Maya and Nicole for putting together such a well balanced program. All of the professional development sessions, projects, lectures and lunches, have given me a better understanding of the industry as a whole, the educational process and the different career options available.
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This week was full-on computer work. So far the majority of the work has been in the lab and field but now its time to wrap things up and get our data displayed on our scientific posters and in the identification cards. Trying to figure out the layout for the scientific poster without results in the beginning of week was a bit trying but I learned a lot on Tuesday during our critique session on the correct formatting, information to display and various other components that go into creating a scientific poster. Since the posters are 40x35(which is pretty large) I was surprised at how difficult it was to fit everything you might want on there.
Our results came in on Wednesday and its been great to see the summary of all the efforts of the past few months. In the end we processed 123 worms and had taken 4,899 photographs (over 20 gb of storage!) which included body, head shots and stylets. We obtained ninety-two DNA barcodes back to analyze. Some of our samples didn't go through due to fuzzy reads and two of the Maculaura magna came back as a polychaete and bivalve, which was most likely their last meal! Unfortunately we had really good photographs of those and now they can’t be included in the guide and the only Maculaura magna with a sequence to match is missing its tail! We do still have tissue samples left of them and some of the others that for one reason or another didn’t go through. So maybe in the future someone will re-run their DNA and include them in the guide. To find out how many different species we had collected, we compared the barcodes with the ones stored in the national database (BLAST) and a local database of sequenced worms previously known to be found here in Oregon. Altogether over the past two months we collected and have a complete set of information, including habitat, color photographs and DNA barcodes on 36 different species. Four of those species are likely to be new to science, two were not previously known to inhabit the Oregon coast and one was only previously known in its larval form. Last week of processing, hopefully all the sequences come back good and we’ll be moving on to computer work. A good amount of my last set of sequences came back fuzzy and unreadable, which is a bummer. I guess it happens since we are using universal primers, any DNA in the tissue sample will also be read (even the DNA of the worms last meal). I used the center portion of a few of the worms so that I could preserve the posterior end for morphology but that may have been a mistake since that area also contains the gut region but its hard to know for sure if that was the issue. Thankfully it turns out that there are other options to try that may still work. Either way, it has provided another learning opportunity of how to problem solve issues that might arise and has helped me to better understand the whole process. Using certain primers that are designed to target a different fragment of DNA specific to nemertean worms may help. These primers will still isolate the same CO1 gene sequence. Keeping the same gene sequence is important for comparison in species identification. Using primers that are more specific to Nemertean DNA will help exclude any non-nemertean DNA from the sample. We will be running the new primers on Friday so we will find out next week if it worked. The last of the worms were photographed this week and I tried my hand at dissecting and removing the stylets for photographs. All Nemertean worms have a proboscis which is sort of like a harpoon that they shoot out to poison and capture their prey. In some species their toxins are excreted out the length of the proboscis which they can then wrap around their prey to immobilize them. Other species have a dagger like appendage at the end of their proboscis called a stylet that allows them to puncture their prey and inject their poison. These worms also have what we refer to as accessory pouches which is where new stylets are made and stored. Different species will have different style stylets and pouches so it is important to document and photograph this section as part of that worms individual features. The worms are so small the dissection and removal of the stylet has to be done under a microscope. It was definitely a bit challenging but also rewarding once it was successfully removed and placed onto a microscope slide for photographs.
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Rebecca OrrHi, my name is Rebecca I’m from Northern California. My major is in biological sciences. I am so excited to be working in Dr. Svetlana Maslakova’s lab and learning the protocol and procedures for completing a modern biodiversity survey. Archives
August 2021
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