![\"Copepod\"](\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2019\/07\/Fed.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
January 27, 2019 (Note: this is #24 in a series of posts describing my NSF-sponsored fieldwork in Antarctica aboard the Laurence M. Gould)<\/em><\/p>\n Today was a good day. I collected samples of copepods (Calanus propinquus<\/em>) that I\u2019ve been incubating in the lab for five days. I\u2019m trying to understand how different species of copepods, feed, store fats, and use stored energy to survive the long Antarctic winter. I\u2019ve been sampling copepods from different environments\u2026up and down the coast, along the diatom-rich ice edge, and in the food-poor blue ocean waters. I\u2019ll look at differences in their physiological condition from those different sites, but help me interpret the patterns I see, nothing beats a good old-fashioned lab experiment. I\u2019ve been keeping the groups of copepods in buckets of chilled seawater, either with natural food sources, or filtered to remove all the food. I set up the experiment, I\u2019ve been maintaining it, and I\u2019ve been holding my breath and hoping for the best.<\/p>\n Check out this poor hungry critter! Compared to the well-fed copepod at the top of the post, this one doesn\u2019t have a stripe of dark green algal matter inside it\u2019s gut (in a stripe along the body). Don\u2019t worry too much though\u2026they store lots of fats inside their bodies and can last a long time without food!<\/p><\/div>\n Today after five days, I sampled about half the animals. I was excited to see that they were all still alive and actively swimming. Almost all the animals in the \u201cfed\u201d group had bellies full of dark green algae. The \u201cunfed\u201d animals were still swimming around, they still retained orange algal pigments, but their guts were completely empty. I photographed each animal, and preserved them for measurements of gene expression, enzyme activity and lipid stores. I\u2019m still running the experiment for a few more days, and those samples will need to travel a long way back to Woods Hole, but for now they are safe in the freezer. Whew!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 27, 2019 (Note: this is #24 in a series of posts describing my NSF-sponsored fieldwork in Antarctica aboard the Laurence M. Gould) Today was a good day. I collected samples of copepods (Calanus propinquus) that I\u2019ve been incubating in the lab for five days. I\u2019m trying to understand how different species of copepods, feed,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":978,"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\/976"}],"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=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":979,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Copepod\"](\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/tarrantlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/79\/2019\/07\/Unfed-300x132-300x132.jpg\")