{"id":800,"date":"2019-01-13T12:19:18","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T16:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/?p=800"},"modified":"2019-07-08T12:29:18","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T16:29:18","slug":"copepods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/copepods\/","title":{"rendered":"Copepods!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Copepod\"<\/p>\n

January 8 2019 (Note: this is #9 in a series of posts describing my NSF-sponsored fieldwork in Antarctica aboard the Laurence M. Gould).<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m on my 9th<\/sup>\u00a0post about this copepod project and I\u2019m finally showing my first picture of a copepod! It sounds a little strange, but the logistics of working here are pretty extreme. It took a couple days to get on ship, then several days for crossing, then a couple days on station, then more transit and whale\/bird surveys. It takes about 10 days from the time I left the door of my house to the time I could take a first sample.<\/p>\n

The picture above shows\u00a0Calanoides acutus<\/em>, one of the species I\u2019m targeting in this study. This copepod is mostly herbivorous, foraging on algae. Over the long polar winter, there isn\u2019t much light for algae to grow, so there isn\u2019t much food for this \u201cvegetarian.\u201d it survives by moving into deep water and going in \u201chibernation\u201d (entering a dormant state called diapause). I\u2019m comparing it to other copepods that have a more omnivorous mixed diet and manage to stay active during the winter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s taken me a couple of days to get a feel for identifying these different copepods. I need to be able to tell them apart when looking from the top (dorsal view like above) and from the side. It\u2019s one thing to be able to do this under the microscope, but to speed up my sampling, I\u2019m also trying to get better at identifying them with my naked eye, when they are still swimming around in the sample bucket. Since they are small (smaller than a grain of rice) and almost transparent, this is tricky. Slowly I\u2019m learning to pick out subtle differences in shape and color.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 8 2019 (Note: this is #9 in a series of posts describing my NSF-sponsored fieldwork in Antarctica aboard the Laurence M. Gould). I\u2019m on my 9th\u00a0post about this copepod project and I\u2019m finally showing my first picture of a copepod! It sounds a little strange, but the logistics of working here are pretty extreme.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":892,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}