Finally in person again: Feng Graduate Research Colloquium 2023!

Posted on June 2, 2023June 13, 2023 by Hannes Baumann

18 May 2023. After a COVID-forced hiatus of more than two years, our department finally held a successful Feng graduate student research colloquium in person again. The Feng Graduate Research Colloquium has been a tradition in the Marine Sciences Department since 1996. Named after the first Head of the Department of Marine Sciences, Dr. Sung Y. Feng, the colloquium was started by Prof. Hans Dam. The colloquium acts as a conference in which students receive friendly, constructive criticism, and have the opportunity to work on developing their abstract writing, leadership, and scientific communication skills. The Colloquium is funded by the Department of Marine Sciences and the S.Y. Feng Scholarship Fund.

This years colloquium featured 16 oral presentations and 20 posters spanning the entire diversity of marine research in our department. Special thanks to the student organizers and Debra Schuler for the help behind the scenes.

See the colloquium list of talks and poster presentations, including abstracts

Our [student] Life on the Ocean

Posted on May 31, 2023June 13, 2023 by Hannes Baumann

By Ewaldo Leitao.
When we say we work or study oceanography, it is common for us to be met with a: “Wow, you must spend a lot of time doing cool stuff in the ocean then!” Alas, most of us spend most of our time on a computer. However, cruises are still an essential part of oceanographic research to collect the necessary data or test equipment. In our department, many students have this opportunity to participate in such cruises; all with fascinating and unique research interests. Over the past year, several students joined cruises to get familiar with field techniques, collect their own data, or to better understand their study area. In this piece, graduate students in our Marine Sciences department shared their experiences in cruises that took place from Summer 2022 up to May 2023.

“In the Summer 2022 I participated in the Sea Education Association (SEA) summer cruise through the great pacific garbage patch, which sailed from Honolulu, HI to San Diego CA, starting In late June and ending in late July. SEA typically runs programs with undergraduates, who take part in cruises to learn about oceanography, sailing, and earn course credit. As a grad student, I was able to tag along as a visiting scientist and focus on collecting data.

My research focused on taking optical measurements, such as spectral reflectance, of freshly-collected plastic pieces. Previous work has been published on plastic spectral reflectance properties, but these measurements were made on dried and stored samples. Out in the environment, plastic pieces are likely to have some degree of biofilming growing on them. So, I sought to collect spectral reflectance measurements of freshly collected plastics in order to assess how the presence of biofilms might impact plastic spectral reflectance. Knowing this will be useful for sensitivity analyses seeking to develop a satellite-based ocean plastic detection algorithm.

During the cruise, I conducted daily neuston net tows to collect plastic pieces. Neuston nets are towed along the surface of the water to collect as many buoyant plastic pieces as possible. Once collected, I rinsed the plastics out of the net and into a bucket, then picked them out and aggregated them for spectral measurement.”

“I participated in NASA’s Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) IOP1 as part of the science party aboard the R/V Bold Horizon. The cruise took place from 10/06/2022 – 11/04/2022 in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 100 miles offshore of San Francisco, California. The focus of this experiment was to sample ocean fronts that are a few kilometers in size to study their dynamics and effects on vertical transport. The ocean fronts were sampled using aircraft, ship surveying, and autonomous platforms such as wave gliders, sea gliders, saildrones, floats, and drifters. I worked the night shift from 4pm – 4am, running an instrument called an EcoCTD, which measures temperature, salinity, pressure, chlorophyll, backscatter, and oxygen. I also helped with the recovery and deployment of wave gliders and mixed layer floats.

I am currently (03/06/2023 – 04/06/2023) aboard NOAA’s R/V Ronald H. Brown for U.S. GO-SHIP’s decadal reoccupation of A16N in the Atlantic Ocean. I am participating in the first leg of the cruise, sailing from Brazil to Spain. The second leg of the cruise will be sailing from Spain to Iceland. This is a longline hydrographic cruise, where we take CTD casts at many stations along the same longitude line. The CTD rosette has 24 bottles and is deployed to the bottom of the ocean. I am working with Dr. Chris Langdon’s research lab out of the University of Miami. The Langdon lab is leading measurements on oxygen, pH, and total alkalinity. I am overseeing pH measurements using a spectrophotometer. Other groups are taking measurements which include DIC, DOC, CFCs, velocity, temperature, salinity, and biological samples. The best part of my trip so far has been getting to explore Brazil, crossing the equator, and viewing beautiful sunrises every morning.”

Yipeng He, alumnus of the Mason Mercury Lab, studied air-sea mercury exchange in the ocean for his PhD, also had cool research experiences in cruises.

“I was on a scientific cruise - the GEOTRACES GP17 cruise, leaving San Diego (CA) on Nov 13 2022. Going from North Pacific to South Pacific, crossing the Equator, going further south and crossing the Antarctic cycle, and arriving at Punta Arena (Chile) on Jan 25 (2023). The boat was R/V Roger Revelle, which was my second time sailing on this boat. The first time was the GEOTRACES GP15 cruise in 2018. I was collecting samples and measuring atmospheric mercury species, air-sea exchange of mercury species and surface ocean Beryllium-7 profile.”

Congratulations to Dr. Patricia Myer, PhD!

Posted on April 10, 2023June 29, 2023 by Manning, Cara

Congratulations to Dr. Patricia Myer, the department’s newest PhD! Here is a description and some photos of Dr. Myer’s PhD journey, in her own words.

My Ph.D. dissertation defense was on March 20^th, 2023, and titled “A Critical Examination of the Factors Controlling Methylmercury Uptake into Marine Plankton.”

I am a student in Dr. Robert Mason’s group and my research includes a three-year long time series of methylmercury in phytoplankton in Narragansett Bay, RI, a research cruise in the Northwest Pacific (NOAA GU1905), and laboratory uptake experiments with the dinoflagellate O. marina.

The goal of these projects was ultimately to compare the effects of biological and environmental variables (e.g., cell size, temperature, dissolved organic matter) between laboratory experiments and environmental studies to try to disentangle the leading drivers of methylmercury accumulation into plankton. The main takeaway is that relationships seen in laboratory experiments, both from my work and the literature, are not nearly as straightforward in the environment. There is a lot more work to be done to understand these complex relationships.

Currently, I have one publication from my prior undergraduate work (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-022-02548-0) and one from my work in the Mason lab that is not part of my dissertation (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.134609). I am currently preparing three papers relating to my dissertation for publication.

This work was funded by NSF Chemical Oceanography and the UConn Predoctoral Award.

Myer on the GU1905 cruise with a portable fume hood for processing methylmercury samples into particulate and dissolved fractions – October 2019

Myer presenting in Krakow, Poland at the International Conference for Mercury as a Global Pollutant (ICMGP) – September 2019

Kayla Mladinich Poole receives R. LeRoy Creswell Award for Outreach and Education

Posted on April 4, 2023April 4, 2023 by Manning, Cara

Kayla Mladinich Poole, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Marine Sciences, was awarded the R. LeRoy Creswell Award for Outreach and Education through the National Shellfisheries Association (NSA). Kayla was selected for her extensive communications and outreach experience with the public and in STEM, as well as for her work as an active volunteer at the annual NSA conferences. Kayla is the first recipient of the award created to honor R. LeRoy Creswell’s life and impressive work in outreach and extension services. Congratulations, Kayla!

Kayla and Prof. Evan Ward collecting samples in the field

Heat tolerance changes across environments and populations

Posted on March 27, 2023March 27, 2023 by Hannes Baumann

March 27th 2023 - By Ewaldo Leitao.

Climate change is a threat to species persistence. Increasing temperatures affect species differently depending on their habitats, such as land or the ocean. However, species often consist of different populations (groups of individuals that reproduce together) that experience different temperature conditions. And if populations live in these areas long enough, they can genetically adapt to their local conditions. What does that mean? If the same species has a population in an area where it is constantly warm, like the tropics, and another population that lives in colder regions, like Connecticut, then we’d expect the tropical population to handle high temperatures better compared to the population living in colder regions. This kind of diversity within species affects how we think about the vulnerability of the species as a whole. To add another layer, if variation differs for terrestrial vs. oceanic species, we might be missing important information about where climate change will have the strongest effects on the planet.

That is what Dr. Matt Sasaki and collaborators investigated in a paper recently published in Nature Climate Change. Their main goal was to assess the heat tolerance (the highest survivable temperature) of populations in many different species, from different realms – terrestrial, freshwater, marine and intertidal. They assessed the vulnerability of species by surveying in the literature from the whole world that measured individual heat tolerance. They compiled and then conducted a meta-analysis of these published data, thereby assessing how the heat tolerance is related to the thermal environment these populations live in.

“This paper came out of the ‘Evolution in Changing Seas’ Research Coordination Network (RCN). Back in 2019 they brought some of us together at Shoal’s Marine Lab for a synthesis workshop and essentially told us to think about questions at the intersection of evolutionary biology and marine science”, said Matthew Sasaki, about the seed of the idea.

"I really enjoyed the collaborative aspect of this project, even though I’ve met most of the co-authors in person only once (or not at all!)"

By measuring how heat tolerance changes between populations of the same species, they found that marine and intertidal species show a decrease of heat tolerance between populations as the environment gets colder, but that was not observed in terrestrial and freshwater populations. This was an interesting result, because since the ocean is largely connected, they expected that there would be a smaller differentiation in the ocean compared to land, where geographical barriers can create physical separations, allowing difference in heat tolerance to build up among populations within a species.

Behavior may play a role in the observed patterns. In the terrestrial realm, many organisms can moderate body temperature by seeking shade and forested areas to find refuges from the heat. Even plants can exploit micro-climates. This decreases the amount of evolutionary pressure on terrestrial organisms, when compared to other realms.

This study highlights the importance of accounting for evolutionary processes in the context of climate change and species persistence and extinction risk. Larger differentiation of heat tolerance within species may suggest a potential for evolutionary rescue. That is, populations with genes that allow them to be “warm adapted” may rescue populations that are more susceptible to increasing warming.

We asked what was the coolest part about the execution and findings of the project. “This wasn’t a project someone could do alone, and it was really cool to be part of such a big collaborative effort. The findings themselves were also really exciting for us. We expected there to be pretty clear differences between marine and terrestrial taxa, but we were surprised to see that local adaptation seems to be stronger in marine species and not terrestrial species. This goes against some of the traditional paradigms (that marine species’ are more often homogenized by larval dispersal, for example), and hints at a cool role of behavioral thermoregulation in shaping patterns in evolutionary adaptation.”

“This was definitely a pandemic pet project. I won’t say the pandemic helped us make progress though. This ended up being something we worked on a little bit each week for a couple years. Maybe that helped us put together a more robust product (slow and steady wins the race?). I really enjoyed the collaborative aspect of this project, even though I’ve met most of the co-authors in person only once (or not at all!). Having to do everything virtually definitely changed the nature of the collaboration (more written exchanges, less whiteboard brainstorming) but I think we made it work. We’ve just started working together on a couple new projects that build from this initial work, so it must not have been too terrible.”, said Matt.

Sasaki M, Barley JM, Gignoux-Wolfsohn S, Hays CG, Kelly MW, Putnam AB, Sheth SN, Villeneuve AR, Cheng BS (2022) Greater evolutionary divergence of thermal limits within marine than terrestrial species. Nature Climate Change. 2022 Dec 1:1-6.

Sampling freshwater mussel gut microbiomes in the Great Lakes

Posted on March 17, 2023March 17, 2023 by Hannes Baumann

In June 2022, Hannah Collins and Tyler Griffin from the Ward Environmental Physiology Lab went to Buffalo, NY, to perform research on the gut microbiomes of freshwater quagga mussels (Dreissena bugensis). The three-day trip involved collecting these invasive mussels from Lake Erie with the help of Brian Haas at the Buffalo State Great Lakes Center field station. The goal of the project, funded by an NSF Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation grant, was to sample mussel gut microbes before and after defecation with the goal of distinguishing between microbes that live inside the mussels and other microbes that were simply passing through. This work serves as preliminary research for the larger goal of investigating the feasibility of using freshwater mussels to remove microplastics from freshwater systems and co-concentration them with plastic-degrading bacteria.

Prof. Catherine Matassa wins UConn-AAUP Teaching excellence award

Posted on March 16, 2023June 1, 2023 by Hannes Baumann

23 March 2023. DMS is proud to share that Prof. Catherine Matassa has been selected for a 2023 UConn-AAUP Excellence Award in the Early Career Teaching category. This is well deserved, because since joining our department, Catherine has distinguished herself as one of the most cherished, effective and innovative educators for undergraduate and graduate students of our Department and CLAS. Her enthusiasm for Marine Biology and her innovative approach to teaching Quantitative Methods and Experimental Design are a true enrichment to students and faculty alike.

Here are some excerpts of what colleagues and students had to say about Catherine's teaching:

"In addition to providing the foundational basis of marine ecosystems, she facilitates transformative learning experiences with hands-on laboratory and field activities where students apply their knowledge and conduct independent research. Courses where students conduct independent research require much larger investment of time and energy from the instructor." Prof. Heidi Dierssen

"Almost from the time I arrived at UConn in 1995, I heard colleagues in Marine Sciences discussing the need for an Experimental Design/Statistics course for our students. Being located at Avery Point has always limited our participation in Storrs-based classes, so we tried, and failed, several times to develop a course of our own. When Catherine arrived, the problem was solved. Her class, MARN 4210Q Experimental Design in Marine Ecology, covers the basics of hypothesis testing and gives students a good working knowledge of R, the state-of-the-art computing environment for scientific statistics." Prof. George McManus

"Catherine created the experimental design and analysis course to address the demand for a course that covered statistics, coding and design. The course provided us with real data to run analyses on in R and posed questions, which we addressed with experimental design. The homework was dynamic and helped me hone my abilities coding in R and interpreting statistical results. I took a statistics class during my undergraduate studies but gained a much better understanding of analyses with Catherine's hands-on approach." Kayla Mladinich, PhD student

"I took Dr. Matassa’s Marine Biology course in the Fall of 2022. I personally was impressed with how innovative and diverse the content that she included in the class was. The laboratory experiments perfectly complemented the lecture period and helped me relate the information on the slides to real life situations. The ability to write and explore our own independent projects as well provided creative freedom that many other class labs seem to be lacking, and she did well to encourage critical thinking and exemplify how our experiments relate to real marine problems. Her inclusion of science communication in the curriculum was also a refreshing innovation to the lecture period, and something I had not experienced before in a STEM class." Greg Aniolek, undergraduate student

"Dr. Matassa coordinated an engaging field trip to Avery Point that was an exciting opportunity for students to expand their knowledge outside of the classroom. This opportunity included a tour of the Long Island Sound on a Project Oceanography research boat. While the tour was guided by two Project Oceanography educators, Dr. Matassa took every chance to communicate additional information that related to our classroom studies and energetically answered the questions that were raised. Dr. Matassa had something interesting and relevant to say about every species that we collected on the boat." Lukas Liebowitz, Senior Biology Major 2023

Jamie Vaudrey selected for Faculty Environmental Leadership Award

Posted on March 16, 2023March 17, 2023 by Hannes Baumann

16 March 2023. DMS is proud to announce that Prof. Jamie Vaudrey has been selected for the 2023 Faculty Environmental Leadership Award (ELA). This award recognizes individuals who have worked alone or as part of organizations to support sustainability efforts at UConn and beyond.

Since 2005, the Office of Sustainability, within the Institute of the Environment has honored faculty members, students and staff members who have made a positive impact on the environment through their leadership in the classroom, lab, or in the communities which UConn serves

Dr. Vaudrey was nominated, because of her exemplary role as an environmental leader over the past years. She sets the standard for outreach in the Department of Marine Sciences. Communicating science is the fiber that runs through all of her research and teaching. She does this across a broad array of stakeholders often with competing interests. Her outreach extends well beyond advisory to active partnerships with citizen scientists, regulators, municipalities, and industry. It has helped to shape the stewardship trajectories of waters and watersheds regionally, and seagrass ecosystems worldwide.

Her leadership roles in professional societies and on advisory councils have pushed for more integration of scientific results into decision making and broadened participation of underrepresented groups in marine science. Dr. Vaudrey’s key role in gathering the momentum for establishing the Connecticut National Estuarine Research Reserve was her crowning achievement of years of meticulous, patient teamwork, where she led countless meetings to bring experts, policymakers and public stakeholders to the table and eventually, through dialogue and her own unique way of gentle persuasion, make the CT NERR a reality in 2022.

In addition, Dr. Vaudrey has led numerous, hands-on team efforts in recent years to work on sea grass restoration and living shorelines initiatives, where she has been inspiring students and volunteers by practically working alongside them in the field. Dr. Vaudrey’s compassion for nature and the future of Long Island Sound emanates from her everyday work, which is a key motivating force for every member of her team.

Dr. Vaudrey also works with Save the Sound and helped develop an Environmental Report Card for Long Island Sound which has engaged senators and other state and federal agencies to seek additional funding for research on environmental impacts on local waters. Jamie is also the Coordinator for the Niantic River Watershed Committee, and she is an outspoken advocate for environmental issues in our local marine waters. Her impact on understanding of environmental and sustainability impacts in CT’s local waters reaches far beyond the classroom, but she is devoted to educating the next generation of scientists and managers on these important issues.

Anagha Payyambally awarded Quad Fellowship

Posted on January 25, 2023January 25, 2023 by Manning, Cara

Congratulations to Anagha Payyambally, a PhD student in Professor Cara Manning’s research group, who has been selected as part of the inaugural class of Quad Fellows. Anagha is one of 100 recipients out of over 3200 applicants across all STEM fields to be selected for this fellowship, which is administered by Schmidt Futures (a philanthropic initiative of Eric and Wendy Schmidt). The rigorous selection process involved a written application, reference letters, and two interviews, and was designed to assess candidates’ academic excellence, intellectual rigor, interest in the intersection of STEM and society, capacity to bridge differences, and orientation towards results.Here is some info on the award, from Quad:
“This program sponsors 100 exceptional American, Japanese, Australian, and Indian master’s and doctoral students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to study in the United States. The fellowship develops a network of science and technology experts committed to advancing innovation and collaboration in the private, public, and academic sectors, in their own nations and among Quad countries. The program builds foundational understanding among Quad Fellows of one another’s societies and cultures through cohort-wide trips and robust programming with each country’s top scientists, technologists, and politicians.”

The next application for Quad Fellows is expected to open in November 2023.

Mary McGuinness completes MSc on alkalinity in Long Island Sound embayments

Posted on December 9, 2022December 9, 2022 by Manning, Cara

Congratulations to Mary McGuinness who presented her MSc thesis research on alkalinity in Long Island Sound embayments on November 17, 2022. Mary was advised by Dr. Penny Vlahos. Below is a description written by Mary about her research at UConn and her accomplishments during her degree. Check out the photos of her field work, too! Congratulations, Mary, and best wishes for the future!

I came to UConn in June 2020 after receiving the Crandall Fellowship for my commitment to diversity enhancement in higher education and science during my time as a undergraduate of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. While working on the Alkalinity of Long Island Sound Embayments (ALISE) project I was able to conduct field work across the Long Island Sound and help close the gap for alkalinity and inorganic carbon data in these rivers. Over a two year study I observed spatial trends for alkalinity across the Long Island Sound rivers, at their freshwater endmembers and detected help levels of acidification sensitivity. Lastly I produced an attributive model that indicated importance differences between the eastern and western Long Island Sound and presented novel controlling parameters which can be tested with the collection of further data to help fully resolve this system.

I was able to present my work virtually the Ocean Sciences Meeting (2022) and in person at the Long Island Sound Conference (2022) and Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Conference (SETAC) (2022). At the SETAC Conference I was presented with the best Oral Presentation Award.