Oceanus has recently published an article highlighting our studies of the effects of hypoxia on corals. This work is led by former WHOI postdoc Maggie Johnson, and current postdoc Yaamini Venkataraman is contributing to the bioinformatic analyses. If you are interested in this work, you might also this article by Maggie and collaborators and my…

[this post was written by Cory Berger] In a paper recently published in Marine Environmental Research, we characterized the transcriptomic response of our favorite sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis, to weathered oil and/or UV radiation. You can find the paper here. Nematostella, like other coastal organisms, is vulnerable to oil spills, and because it lives in…

(modified from a Facebook post by Amy Maas Oct. 15 2021) In May of 2019 #zoopgroup headed out to sea to try to figure out the daily cycle of a copepods metabolism. A bunch of my beloved people came along for the trip including Ann Tarrant from @whoi.ocean @amnopanic , @bee.widner and it was my…

[all photos by Maggie Johnson] Postdoc Maggie Johnson is a lead author on a new paper that describes the impacts of an acute hypoxia event on a coral reef off the Caribbean coast of Panama. You can find a great description of the work in this press release and can read the full paper here.…

At risk of jinxing myself (and perhaps dating myself with an A-Team reference), “I love it when a plan comes together!” For years I’ve been trying to understand the nuts and bolts of copepod dormancy. Calanus finmarchicus and some other copepods are very abundant planktonic animals that are an important source of food for fishes,…

I’ve been snooping around in our zooplankton “neighborhood.” I’m really interested in how planktonic animals use dormancy to adapt to variable environments. Some copepods, like Acartia tonsa modify their reproductive strategy depending on environmental conditions. Acartia moms can either produce eggs that are ready to hatch, or they can produce dormant eggs. This decision is…

I almost never get interesting mail at work. It’s 99% bills, credit card statements and junky catalogs. With the Covid-19 pandemic ongoing, I am grateful for the hours I’m able to spend in the lab, but sometimes it seems a little grim. This week, I found a large nondescript envelope waiting for me. I had…

(Featured image on main blog page: Rhincalanus gigas, by Miram Gleiber) We recently produced of a high-quality transcriptome for the Antarctic copepod Rhincalanus gigas and described changes in gene expression during the transition between the last juvenile stage and adult female stage. The work is available here: Berger CA, Steinberg DK, Copley NJ, and Tarrant…