European Society of Evolutionary Biology Outreach Grant: "Touch Tank Evolution: Exploring Local Adaptation in a Variable Ocean"

Post date: Nov 16, 2014 9:23:32 PM

Posted by Sara Schaal:

This week I received a grant from the European Society of Evolutionary Biology to carry out an outreach project in the community. Local adaptation plays an important role in evolution and occurs in most ecosystems. However, this process is not widely understood by the general public. My project will teach students at Wake Forest, local high schools, and at SciWorks about local adaptation occurring in our oceans. To accomplish this, I am going to perform a common garden experiment using the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) whose populations show latitudinal clines in shell thickness in response to varying pH and temperature levels. Touch tanks will be set up that will move from the foyer of Winston Hall, to high school classrooms and to SciWorks where I will have students come up with hypotheses as to why oysters grown under the same conditions show variation in shell thickness and discuss what local adaptations is and its role in evolution.