The presence of microplastics in the world’s oceans is the focus of the exhibition “Floating Points: Observing the Plastisphere with NASA”, on view at Alexey von Schlippe (AVS) Gallery of Art at Avery Point through Dec. 10. Link to full article in UConn Today.
Energy companies Ørsted and Eversource are partnering with the University of Connecticut’s Department of Marine Sciences to research the impact of offshore wind farms on marine ecosystems. Link to UConn Today article.
Caption: Graphical abstract depicting that a multi-study analysis of raw 16S gut microbiome data collected from blue mussels revealed that depuration strongly influences the recovered microbial community.
Everybody poops, even mussels! And it turns out that whether a mussels has pooped matters a lot when you sample its gut microbiome. New research published in Environmental Microbiology by the Ward lab and lead author Tyler Griffin reveals that fecal egestion (or depuration) status of mussels is a critically important factor for determining the microbial community composition in the mussel gut. By performing a multistudy re-analysis of microbiome data from several projects conducted by the Ward lab over seven years, they were able to broaden the understanding of gut microbial dynamics of these foundational invertebrates in Long Island Sound. Link to the article.
A group of researchers at DMS joined together under Sandra Shumway and Evan Ward, critically reviewed 750+ publications on microplastics and molluscs in the field and laboratory. This incredible effort has resulted in a thoughtful review of the cluttered scientific literature. Many studies on suspension feeding molluscs and microplastics have perpetuated inaccurate findings based on inappropriate methodologies, poor animal husbandry, and misinterpreted results. All of these false conclusions have caused a damaging narrative for the shellfish industry, raising concerns about the safety of eating shellfish. While microplastics are ingested by shellfish, microplastics in molluscs are extremely low globally as these animals are capable of selective capture, ingestion, and egestion of particles. In reality, the number of microplastics inhaled and consumed by humans in everyday life far outweighs the number of microplastics found in shellfish. Recommendations were provided for future studies in both the field and laboratory that will prevent researchers from falling into the pitfalls discussed in this review. This review is presented from the perspective of experts on shellfish physiology and represents the opinions of, and assessments made by, the authors. The authors hope this review can be used as a starting point for those interested in furthering this field of research with thoughtful experimental questions. Link to the article.
DMS Ph.D. Candidates Kayla Mladinich-Poole and Lauren Barrett have been selected as finalists in the 2024 cohort of the NOAA John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship. Kayla will join the executive branch and Lauren will join the legislative branch. https://seagrant.noaa.gov/2024-knauss-finalists-announcement/
Congratulations to Mengyang Zhou on receiving the best poster award at the recent Gordon Research Conference on Coastal Ocean Dynamics (link:https://www.grc.org/coastal-ocean-dynamics-conference/2023/) in June of 2023. His poster entitled “Constraints on the bottom water residence time in an economically-important embayment of the Southern Benguela Upwelling System” is work that is part of an NSF-funded project led by Pf. Julie Granger (link: https://granger.lab.uconn.edu/) and Pf. Samantha Siedlecki (link: https://samanthasiedlecki.wixsite.com/coastalbiogeodynlab/about-us) in partnership with colleagues at the University of Capetown. Mengyang ran a series of particle tracking experiments in a high-resolution simulation to quantify the residence time of bottom waters plagued with hypoxia. Interannually, years with short bottom water residence time experienced little hypoxia. This work is part of his Ph.D. dissertation research with Pf. Julie Granger.