Seminars

Mussels are well-known ecosystem engineers, often dominating temperate wave-swept shores worldwide.  They are also important aquaculture species and a “biofouling” nuisance to many maritime industries. Disturbance to mussel populations, such as dislodgment due to increased flow forces and/or weakened attachment, therefore has important ecological and economic ramifications.  Mussels attach securely to hard substrates such as rock, aquaculture rope and ship hulls by molding individual collagen-like tethers called byssal threads.  This seminar will describe some of our controlled laboratory experiments on the effects of ocean acidification (OA), ocean warming (OW) and hypoxia on byssal thread strength, as well as our field observations of farmed mussel populations. Our ecomechanical framework provides a valuable tool for predicting the responses of mussels, and their dependent coastal communities, to current and future climate scenarios.

About the speaker:

Emily Carrington is Professor of Biology at the University of Washington, where she leads a marine biomechanics research group based in Seattle and the Friday Harbor Laboratories in the San Juan Islands.  She grew up in Michigan and North Carolina, where she developed a fascination with industrial assembly lines and coastal waves and currents. Her research on the mechanical design of marine invertebrates and macroalgae, especially those that thrive in the wave-swept rocky shores began on the shores of Monterey Bay. Her work draws upon the fields of engineering, biology and oceanography to develop a mechanistic understanding of how coastal organisms will fare in changing ocean climates.

About the speaker:

Dr. Carl Lamborg is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Ocean Sciences Department. Prior to working at UCSC, Carl spent 11 years working at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, first as a Post-doctoral Scholar and later as an Associate Scientist without tenure. Carl received a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Connecticut in 2003, a MS in Environmental Chemistry from University of Michigan, and a BA in Chemistry from Oberlin College.

About the speaker:

Dr. William J. Sydeman is a veteran marine ecologist with expertise in eastern boundary current - upwelling, and other temperate-subarctic ecosystems of the North Pacific.  Bill conducts interdisciplinary research focusing on marine climate impacts on plankton (krill), forage fish, and predators (seabirds).  His expertise includes changes in ocean temperature and winds, population biology of krill and forage fish, seabird ecology and conservation, ecosystem-based fisheries management, and ecological indicators.  He has published about 200 papers in the primary literature, and serves on various advisory panels including as current co-chair of California’s Ocean Protection Council – Science Advisory Team.  Bill lives and works in Petaluma in northern California.  Bill’s presentation will be based on a recent paper published in Science in May 2021 entitled “Hemispheric Asymmetry in Ocean Change and the Productivity of Ecosystem Sentinels” in which he and a large group of international colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of changes in seabird breeding success across the globe and compared responses across seabird trophic levels and foraging behavior.

About the speaker:

Heather Liwanag is an Associate Professor of Biology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego and a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is interested in the physiological adaptations of animals to their environment, and the evolutionary processes involved in those adaptations. Much of her research has focused on thermoregulation (the regulation of body temperature) and energetics (metabolic rates) in vertebrate animals, including seals, sea lions, and even lizards. She has been fortunate to work with an amazing group of people (Team B-030) on this recent project, studying the early development of Weddell seal pups in Antarctica.

About the speaker:

Dr. Jonathan Warrick is a Research Geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, California, where he studies the movement of sediment in rivers and in the sea.  Jon has led efforts to characterize the outcomes of the world’s largest dam removal project on the Elwha River, and his work has been featured in multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Outside Magazine, and the nationally broadcast CBS Evening News.  Jon received a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the UCSB in 2002 and has authored or co-authored over 90 peer reviewed science articles, reports and book chapters and has contributed to or presented over 150 scientific presentations and guest lectures.

About the speaker:

After growing up on a sheep farm in upstate NY, Sean received undergraduate degrees from SUNY Cobleskill and Cornell and his PhD from UC Santa Cruz, where he studied marine mammal physiology and behavior. After years in academia, Sean found his true passion lies in civil service when he joined the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2001. He has since worked on a broad range of challenges and species from pinnipeds to salmon to seabirds and cetaceans. His science experiences have taken him across the country from NMFS offices in Hawaii, California and Oregon, to serving under the NOAA Chief Scientist in Washington DC. In 2016, Sean became the Protected Species Branch Chief at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he works with teams leading the center’s ESA and MMPA research portfolio which includes salmon, marine mammals and sea-turtles. He is currently enjoying a ‘sweet spot’ in his career, where he remains engaged with the science but is able to affect change at higher levels. In this capacity, he is working to focus scientific effort on the ecological challenges of our marine resources in order to remove the ambiguity around stakeholder concerns, thus enabling managers and stakeholders to make scientifically informed decisions to ensure sustainability of our marine resources. He is also enjoying being much closer to his family farm in NY and exploring life in his home on beautiful Cape Cod with his pups, wife, and new daughter.

About the speaker:

Tom received a BA from Wabash College (1966) and served in the US Army from 1966-1969. He received a PhD in Botany from the University of Washington (1973) then spent three years at UBC on a postdoctoral fellowship before joining the Washington Department of Natural Resources in 1976. At WDNR he researched the cultivation of seaweeds for the production of phycolloids and food, and developed and managed programs for management and inventory of seaweeds and seagrasses on state-owned aquatic lands. He served on the Nearshore Science Team for the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration Project. He has taught in various universities and consulted overseas in seaweed aquaculture. Since his retirement in 2011, he is focusing on researching marine algal biodiversity, the role of kelp in marine ecosystems, on kelp restoration, and on teaching. He was lead biologist for an ARPA-E project to grow kelp for biomass and currently is the biologist for the ARPA-E grant “ UNrealized Critical Lanthanide Extraction via Sea Algae Mining (UNCLE-SAM): Domestic production of critical minerals from seawater”. He helped in developing the Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan, and acts in an advisory role for the NW Straits Commission and Pew Trust grant “Kelp conservation through coordinated management and science”. He sits as an alternate on the Strategic Advisory Council for the OCNMS and is on the Science Advisory Committee for the NW Straits Initiative.

Check out his websites here and here.

Talk synopsis:

Sirtuins are regulators of the proteome by modifying metabolic enzymes, chaperones and anti-oxidative stress proteins to improve the response of organisms to several environmental stressors.  We tested their role in two marine mussel species that vary in their response to heat and salinity stress.  A key question for integrative biology is if these molecular differences affect phenotypes at higher levels of organismal organization.  We tested this assumption while simultaneously monitoring the molecular changes accompanying changes in ciliary activity, particle velocity of the gill, a feeding organ in mussels, and whole organism filtration rates.  The presentation will discuss the challenges of doing integrative biology.

About the speaker:

Karen Crow is a Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University, and will be the MLML Visiting Scientist for the 2021/22 academic year. She earned a B.S. in Environmental Biology from the CSU Northridge, a M.S. in Marine Science from MLML/SFSU, a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Yale University. 

While her training and background is squarely based in evolutionary biology, her interests and research are primarily centered on EvoDevo (Evolutionary Developmental Biology). She studies the evolution of vertebrate diversity by investigating the genetic basis of variation in body plans. She has investigated the evolution of the paddlefish rostrum, barbels in fishes, novel sphincters in gobies, fin and limb modifications in batoids and other fishes, and the role of genome duplication on body plan evolution and diversity of teleosts. Because reproduction is the currency of fitness, she also investigates alternative reproductive strategies in derived vertebrates including surfperches (the only vertebrate that gives birth to "teenagers"), pipefishes (the only vertebrate that exhibits male pregnancy) , and bidirectional sex change in gobies (the ultimate in gender flexibility).

About the speaker:

Douglas McCauley is an Associate Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and the Director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative. Prof. McCauley is a Sloan Research Fellow in the Ocean Sciences and member of World Economic Forum’s Friends of Ocean Action.

Prof. McCauley has degrees in political science and biology from the University of California at Berkeley and a PhD in Biology from Stanford. He conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford, Princeton, and UC Berkeley. 

Prof. McCauley’s research centers upon using advances in marine science, ocean data, and marine technology to promote ocean health. Incorporating new forms of tech into ocean science is an especially important part of the DNA of research in McCauley’s laboratory. 

Research from the McCauley Lab has been published in leading research journals such as Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA and has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, Time, US National Public Radio, and at the World Economic Forum.