After two weeks of giving lectures in Spain and Portugal, University biology professor Michelle Wood is back in Oregon and excited to have a chance to get to the lab.
Wood, director for the University’s Center of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is looking forward to analyzing some recent research. In June, she – joined by several University students and counterparts from Illinois Wesleyan University – spent 10 days in the Bahamas, living on a ship and studying the food cycles of bottom-dwellers such as coral, starfish and sea urchins.
These marine invertebrates produce microscopic larvae that float around the ocean before settling down to the bottom during adulthood. The transformation is similar to that of a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly.
“In order to have these healthy bottom-dwelling animals, they have to get through larval stages,” Wood said, on the decision to study the larvae and how it survives through its intermediate stage.
The deep sea research elaborated on similar research by Dr. Craig Young of the University’s Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, who found that mussel larvae in the Gulf of Mexico eat photosynthetic picoplankton. At one-two thousandth of a millimeter, picoplankton are among the world’s tiniest organisms.
The group’s research – funded by a federal research grant written by Young – hypothesized that similar larvae eat similar microscopic photosynthetic bacteria.
Using nets and collection bottles, the research group captured specimen as deep as 900 meters, which were then sorted, identified and studied.
“It was a lot of microscope work and I got to see larvae I’d never seen before,” said Maya Wolf, a University doctoral student. “It was a really good experience.”
Before the Bahamas, Wolf had been on two deep-sea research trips to the Gulf of Mexico with Young.
The picoplankton was separated into different Petri dishes of water, a control group and a group with the larvae. Since the picoplankton are too small to see, they will be accounted for using a flow cytometer, an instrument that essentially counts cells.
The number of picoplankton in the control group is expected to grow. The experiment’s conclusion lies in whether the same rings true for the group mixed in with the larvae.
The University’s equipment is better suited for working with other types of cells, so research analysis will begin soon at Oregon State University. When it will end, however, is unclear.
“With oceanography, you can do two weeks at sea and have a whole year’s worth of work in the lab,” Wood said.
The Bahamas was an ideal location to study, she added.
The group’s research took place in the Tongue of the Ocean. Amidst the relatively shallow water bank of the Bahamas, Tongue of the Ocean is a 2,500-meter oceanic trench between New Providence and the Andros islands.
“It’s like an underwater canyon,” Wood said.
She added that Tongue of the Ocean’s slope-like geography, similar to that of the Hawaiian Islands, made for a convenient place to do research, because the varying depth levels didn’t require much traveling.
“There’s such a quick drop off, so it was only two hours from 2,000 feet to 20 feet,” University doctoral student Tracey Smart said. She added the accessibility to different depths made it possible to occasionally leave the ship and enjoy the Bahamas.
“It was really cool, it was the first cruise I’d been on that was in shallow enough water to go snorkeling,” she said.
Smart has previously been on three similar trips through the University, as well as two others through the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. The Bahamas was her sixth trip, but probably not her last.
In addition to Wolf and Smart, there were four other University doctoral students on the trip, as well as two undergraduates from Illinois Wesleyan.
“It was a really fun cruise,” Wood said, “because we had so many students who were figuring out if they wanted to study oceanography.”
Sarah Lewis, for one, recently graduated from Illinois Wesleyan and planned to go to graduate school for epidemiology, the study of disease causes and transmissions within a population. But she enjoyed the trip so much that she deferred her acceptance and got a job on the ship.
Both Smart and Wolf also plan to go on more marine research expeditions in the future.
A follow-up trip to the Bahamas is scheduled for April 2008. In the spring, researchers will use a submarine and focus more on the ocean floor.
“Submersible is exciting,” Wolf said. “Hopefully I’ll be going on the next one.”
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