To help my growing research program, I have the pleasure of working with several fantastic undergraduate researchers. They have helped in the design, implementation, and data analysis for several interesting projects involving anemones. The first project involves the infection dynamics of Symbiodinium dinoflagellates and their Aiptasia anemone hosts. As mentioned on my research page, there are many types of Symbiodinium and this project assesses the specificity among closely related strains. Oregon State University undergraduate Kevin Corey has been a tremendous help with this project and has helped develop a non-destructive, fluorescence-based assay to determine infection of these algal symbionts. He has since tried infecting aposymbiotic anemones with several strains of Symbiodinium and is keeping track of the infection status. He recently presented these data at the 2014 Western Society of Naturalists meeting in Tacoma. Congrats!
Recently, I have branched out to study the aggregating anemone, Anthopleura elegantissima here on the Oregon Coast with the help of two outstanding undergraduate students at OSU: Xavier Gonzalez and Natalie Coleman. This anemone is fascinating to study as it is clonal and forms a caste system with division of labor. Animals in the middle of colonies are large and reproductive, whereas the animals near the edge form a non-reproductive warrior caste protecting the reproductive individuals with stinging tentacles called acrorhagi (See image below). Xavier spend the summer with me at Hatfield Marine Science Center examining the fighting ability of warriors and reproductive individuals and found a significant effect of size on the outcome. He is now conducting RNAseq to determine if there is a change in gene expression with increased fighting.
Recently, I have branched out to study the aggregating anemone, Anthopleura elegantissima here on the Oregon Coast with the help of two outstanding undergraduate students at OSU: Xavier Gonzalez and Natalie Coleman. This anemone is fascinating to study as it is clonal and forms a caste system with division of labor. Animals in the middle of colonies are large and reproductive, whereas the animals near the edge form a non-reproductive warrior caste protecting the reproductive individuals with stinging tentacles called acrorhagi (See image below). Xavier spend the summer with me at Hatfield Marine Science Center examining the fighting ability of warriors and reproductive individuals and found a significant effect of size on the outcome. He is now conducting RNAseq to determine if there is a change in gene expression with increased fighting.
Natalie is working on stress tolerance of emersion (how long the anemone can remain out of water). These are intertidal animals that can be out of the water for hours each day. Natalie has found that Anthopleura elegantissima can survive up to 7 days out of the water on the bench! She is currently extracting RNA to determine if there are significant changes in gene expression associated with this stress.