Part One of Sara's Touch Tank Evolution Workshop

Post date: Jun 24, 2016 2:25:19 AM

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of having the Essex Technical High School Coastal Ecology class come for a four-day workshop on evolution and adaptation in marine ecosystems. Already having experience in ecology and an interest in marine science, I set up this workshop to give these students a more advanced exposure to the scientific method, which included: developing research questions, hypothesis testing, field data collection, lab experiments, data analysis in Microsoft Excel and statistical testing in StatPlus.

On day one students learned about the rocky intertidal around Nahant and carried out species composition surveys using quadrats at three different tidal heights. They analyzed their data by developing multiple graph types, discussed which graph displayed their data best, and discussed the adaptations of the species found in each tidal height that included physical (e.g. coloration patterns, shell structures and thicknesses, etc.), behavioral (e.g. hiding in rock crevices, forming aggregations, etc.), or physiological adaptations (e.g. varying metabolic rate).

On day two students learned about the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) fishery and the presence of the olive and red cod life history variants. The students learned how to use the free program ImageJ to do morphometric analysis on images and how to carry out a Student’s t-test to determine which measurements varied significantly between the two life history variants.

On day three students set up an experiment to test whether bird predation causes adaptation for cryptic coloration in periwinkle snails in the rocky intertidal. Students made edible dough snails, used food coloring to create two different color morphs, placed them on platforms in the intertidal that had the same or opposite color background. Then let them sit for 24 hours and count the number missing or partially eaten the following day.

Finally, on day four students learned about physiological ways that species can adapt to their environment. They learned about mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus) that survive in extremely different thermal environments and came up with their own hypotheses about which populations would be better able to handle changes in their thermal environment. They placed mummichog from North of Cape Cod and South of Cape Cod in respiration chambers and compared the change in oxygen consumption in a control and an elevated treatment temperature. Using a YSI oxygen meter, they were able to analyze graphs displaying the decay of oxygen over time to determine whether the results supported their hypotheses.

Overall it was a great workshop and the students gave great feedback! I will be running this workshop in August as well with the Coastal Ocean Sciences Academy (COSA) program that the Northeastern University Marine Science Center Outreach program puts on every year. A big thank you to the European Society of Evolutionary Biology for supporting this workshop!