Congratulations to Melia Paguirigan for being selected by the ASLO Multicultural Program to attend the 2017 ASLO meeting in Honolulu Hawaii. (ASLO = the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography) Melia presented a poster about the research she conducted in my lab during summer 2016. Read more about her research and experience here. Her research on diatom aggregation was made possible through the California State University Monterey Bay Research Experience for Undergraduates. Great work Melia!
It is always exciting when science and art intersect. This summer, science illustrator Natalie Renier created this beautiful image to help CSUMB REU student Melia Paguirigan communicate her research about diatom aggregation:
The biological pump is very complex, and this image helped Melia communicate the components of that process that were directly related to her project.
To see more of Natalie Renier’s work, visit her website:
This summer I participated in the California State University Monterey Bay Research Experience Undergraduate program, with Dr. Colleen Durkin as my mentor. Our project investigated the role of diatom community composition and morphology in aggregation. We collected whole seawater samples from Monterey Bay.
collecting seawater and a plankton net tow on an MLML boston whaler offshore of Moss Landing
Then I used a roller table to make aggregates.
In the lab, we used microscopy techniques to quantify the community composition of the aggregates and the corresponding surface water.
The data was then used to identify if diatoms differentially aggregate and if morphology was driving differential aggregation. Throughout this process I was able to become familiar with over 20 diatom genera, using their shape and colony formation as identifiers.
(Note from Colleen: Melia estimates that she counted >21,000 individual diatom cells this summer! She found significantly different phytoplankton compositions in aggregates compared to the total community in seawater, suggesting that some genera tend to be incorporated into aggregates more than others. Melia plans to present this data at a conference later this year.)
