Comments on: Microscopic Zoo!! http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/ Mentoring our sea-going scientists Sun, 15 Jun 2014 19:14:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.2 By: Steven Tuorto http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-294 Thu, 05 Jun 2014 17:28:25 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-294 Hi Liam,
Many planktonic animals are really amazing. They have elaborate shapes and various adaptations for feeding. For example, some copepods (small crustaceans) have brush-like appendages to collect small particles as food while others have big maxillipeds and are predators. One type of copepod has turquoise-colored eggs that they carry beneath their body. Another copepod has black and white stripes. Another type is flat and blue and lives near the sea surface. Their adaptations and behavior are always amazing. Karen W

]]> By: Liam http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-271 Thu, 05 Jun 2014 14:28:20 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-271 When you said you could figure out what past oceans would be like do you think you will find at least 50 new species?

]]> By: Liam http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-259 Thu, 05 Jun 2014 14:22:18 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-259 What is the most interesting/amazing type of Plankton?

]]> By: kayla http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-257 Thu, 05 Jun 2014 14:20:39 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-257 What made you want to research about the microscopic zoo?

]]> By: Olivia http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-245 Thu, 05 Jun 2014 12:45:40 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-245 why do Foraminifera shells sink when they die?

]]> By: Kat Allen http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-207 Wed, 04 Jun 2014 18:28:59 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-207 The shells of foraminifera are made of calcium carbonate (calcium, carbon, oxygen, and very small amounts of some other elements). The first measurements I make are very simple — length and weight of each shell. The shells are usually less than a millimeter long and weigh a small fraction of a milligram, so I have to be careful. One time I sneezed and lost a foram. Next, I clean the calcite shells by rinsing them several times to remove fine particles. Then, I clean them with oxidative chemicals (that will remove organic matter) and reductive chemicals (that will remove any contaminating metal oxides). Finally, I crush the shells and dissolve them (this is the most stressful step! I hate watching my sample disappear, even though it is a planned part of the procedure). Once the sample is dissolved, I run it through an instrument called a mass spectrometer, which can determine the elemental composition of the sample. This information is really useful because it tells us about the environment in which the forams lived. For example, the warmer the water, the higher the ratio of magnesium to calcium in the shells. We can apply these relationships (called proxies) to modern samples and also to fossil samples. In this way, we can figure out the ocean’s temperature history, which is very useful to understanding evolution of marine organisms as well as quantifying past climate change.
–Kat Allen

]]> By: Future Scientist http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-189 Wed, 04 Jun 2014 12:06:25 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-189 Steve Techtmann:
Once you grow the DNA and RNA of this bacteria will you expose to oil to see how it will react… as it does in the ocean?

]]> By: Steven Tuorto http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-179 Tue, 03 Jun 2014 23:17:29 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-179 A nice way to think of the biological camouflage problem is to start by considering a particular animal, and imagine what it must do to survive in its environment. In particular, three things are most important: finding food, finding mates, and avoiding predation. For my work, I’ve chosen to focus on predation aversion, and two particular aspects of this: physical appearance and the ambient light field. I previously built an instrument to measure how light is scattered from the skin of a few deep sea species of mirrored squid and fish. These measurements provide us with a quantitative understanding of the appearance of some of the animals that live in these parts of the ocean. More recently, I built two highly-sensitive radiometers that measure a quantity called `downwelling irradiance’ which can be thought of as the light that is falling downward (from the surface) in the ocean. These are the instruments that I brought with me on the CST cruise. I am interested to see what the downwelling irradiance looks like at up to 500 meters deep in the ocean, as we have many models, but few measurements at these depths. I hope that with the combination of information from animal appearance and an improved idea of what the deep sea habitats look like, we can discover some of nature’s strategies for deep sea biological camouflage.

My undergraduate degree was in physics, which I received from Northern Illinois University. For studies such as the one I described, where novel technology is applied to solving interesting biological problems, I think the most important thing is to obtain a diverse education. You should consider taking classes in all areas of science and engineering, regardless of your major. Having more tools in your toolbox will allow you to bring a unique perspective to any problem you encounter.

-Justin

]]> By: jorge http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-178 Tue, 03 Jun 2014 20:24:45 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-178 How do you think aerosols affect our climate ?

]]> By: Carlos Esquivel (San Diego High School MVPA) http://csw.unols.org/2014/06/microscopic-zoo/#comment-176 Tue, 03 Jun 2014 20:22:28 +0000 http://csw.unols.org/?p=1076#comment-176 How are you going to study the foraminifera glow shells…. with what equipment????

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