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10/24/19
10/24/19
For the past week and a half, I was working hard on my MARC Q1 presentation. Considering I changed my overall project less than a month ago, I think it went well. Moving into November, I am aiming to focus on a certain species of sea urchin and working on a solid methodology. Until next time!
9/26/19
9/26/19
Hello everyone! This past week I have honed in the fossils of echinoderms as a next step to my study. I made contact with Dr. Mah from the Smithsonian, and I will send out an intro email to Dr. Mooi at the Cal Academy of Science. Until next time!
9/19/19
9/19/19
Welcome Back! This is a new year and I will be slightly changing the focus of my project to evolution of coral. I think this will be more relevant in today's world with tons of coral dying every year. Hopefully I can get a new mentor in the next few weeks and begin research ASAP. Until next time.
2/17/19
2/17/19
Sorry for the long wait, but it has been a couple of hectic weeks. A day ago, I did my experimental design lesson and I think it went ok. I talked about the overall field of evolutionary biology and talked about my specific plan/research question. Next week is minicourse, so I will not be updating the blog next week, but stay tuned because I have some big plans for when I come back.
Over the last couple of days, I have begun to get back into the swing of things. My goals for this month are to gain access to the Berkeley fossil and iron out the last details of my methodology. Hopefully before I go to spring break, I can begin to start collecting data for my science symposium. See you guys next time!
2/6/19
2/6/19
I got a response from one of the professors and was able to use some aspects of her methodology into my lesson plan. I plan on following it up with a phone call, but I have to figure out a time that works for both of us.
I have just sent out 3 emails to mentors and have found a couple of lesson plans I can incorporate into my lesson. I have also been delving into more lit research in order to bolster my lesson. Hopefully, I will get email responses in the next week. See you next week.
1/22/19
1/22/19
I have begun to contact potential mentors so I can solidify my methodology. We are also beginning to work on experimental design lessons, so mentor advice will be invaluable to my lessons success.
12/13/19
12/13/19
Hello everyone!
This time I have finally landed on a specific topic, thanks in part to the advice of Rich Mooi from the Cal Academy of Sciences. I will looking into the ophicephalous pedicellariae of clypeasterines. I will begin CT scans in the coming month and hopefully have raw data by the end of January. Until next time!
Science Symposium Update (May 2019)...
Science Symposium Update (May 2019)...
Although the dataset was smaller than initially anticipated, it allowed me to see basic trends that could have further implications in future research. Between the time span of 1930-2014, there was a sharp decline in the length of the observed Pleuronectiformes, but also was accompanied by a 1.2 ℃ change in global ocean temperature as observed in the below figure.
A possible explanation for the steady decline in Pleuronectiformes length is, in fact, rising sea temperatures. Dr. Cheung of the University of Oxford examined the shrinking size of tunas and cites that, “the oxygen supply to large fish size cannot be met by their gills, whose surface area cannot keep up with the oxygen demand by their three‐dimensional bodies”.
I hypothesize this could very well be an explanation for the trend found in my data, but further research is required. As shown in the figure below, the gills of a fish are a major organ, heavily influencing the metabolism and hence size of each individual fish. supported by the Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory (GOLT) that entails fish retain the properties of open surfaces because their growth, even while hypoallometric, cannot keep up with the demand of growing three‐dimensional bodies. Dr Cheung states that there could a 25% decrease in size due to the warming waters. If I continued down the path of examining global warming in the ocean and how it effects Pleuronectiformes evolution, I will need to both examine the length of gills and simply get more specimens to analyze.
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