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MARVELOUS MICROSCOPES

2/11/2016

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Microscopes can be a big part of daily life in an ecology lab.  In this photo, Liz is using a microscope to identify organisms that were collected along with Gracilaria. They can be described as epifauna. Epifauna are organisms that live on a particular substrate. In this case, these animals were all using Gracilaria as their home.  One organism Liz is finding a lot of, are amphipods. Click here to see an amphipod species often found in South Carolina.
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Kicking the Bucket... Part 2

2/10/2016

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Too much light?

Last week the Science Spotlight crew stopped by the lab and heard that many Gracilaria specimens being cultured in the wetlab had died off.
One idea is that they received too much light. Huh? It's true, folks. Too much light, especially in an artificial environment can be bad for algae or plants.
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Scientists are organized - ben

2/10/2016

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Yesterday we caught up with Ben, who was preparing to start another temperature assay.  But what really caught our eye were the tubes and trays! Tips cut off Gracilaria plants are first placed in these labeled, colored tubes. It is these colored tubes that are placed in the water bath that is set to a certain temperature- the temperature Ben is experimenting with (food for thought: is temperature the dependent or independent variable?).  After the water bath, tips are placed in these clear trays and monitored for bleaching over 8 days.
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if you aren't running an experiment... what are you doing?

2/3/2016

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Remember the scientific method? Well... that part about analysis can be a big portion of what a scientist does after running an assay, or experiment. Yesterday we caught up with Stacey in her and Glauco's office.  Boy! She sure was hard at work at her computer!  When asked what she was up to, with a wry smile she answered, "Data analysis.  It can be exciting, sometimes not so exciting." Glauco, also at his desk, answered he was indeed busy with his experiments this week.
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Kicking the Bucket.

2/3/2016

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The Science Spotlight team stopped by the Sotka lab today and found Sarah and Paige who had just finished cleaning up in the wetlab.  It turns out, sometimes things in science don't always go as planned- and a lot of times there isn't a plan, because you just don't know. In this case, raising and growing Gracilaria in a lab meant that at some point, some of these specimens might "kick the bucket", quite literally.  Much of the Gracilaria residing in the wetlab had died off and as of yesterday, the Sotka lab was down from 48 buckets housing algae to 22.  This is neither a positive or a negative necessarily, just the natural flow of events in a lab over time as experiments and research goes on.  Despite the death of some specimens, Sarah is wrapping up one last experiment with the Gracilaria collected in Japan.

Follow up with our blog this week as we discuss a potential theory for the wetlab Gracilaria mortality!
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Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum 
40 Patriots Point Rd.
Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464

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