Visiting Graduate Student Awards
Addison E. Verrill and Henry Bryant Bigelow were leaders in the field of marine science. In keeping with the spirit of these great researchers, the DMC grants facility awards to graduate students from outside institutions.
The Addison E. Verrill Awards for Marine Biology and the Henry Bryant Bigelow Awards for Oceanography are offered to graduate students looking to collect samples or conduct experiments at a world class marine laboratory. Each award provides up to $3400 annually for 1-4 years of facility use: housing, laboratory space, aquaria, SCUBA support and boat rentals. Eligible students must be currently enrolled in a recognized graduate program. Preference will be given to students who conduct field-oriented studies, but who have had limited marine lab or field station experience.
Notes
- Awards are available for 1-4 years to promote long term research projects. If you are applying for a multi-year award you must include a budget and research plan for each year and an annual letter of continued support must be submitted by your thesis advisor.
- Lodging is double occupancy dorm room.
- Scuba support available only to those meeting UMaine and AAUS dive requirements
- R/V charters cannot account for more than $1700 of award.
- Graduate awards are not transferable to advisor.
To apply, graduate students must submit:
- Completed Graduate Award Applicaiton and Budget Form
- Essay as described on application form
- Letter of recommendation from thesis advisor
Application materials should be mailed or faxed to:
Linda Healy, Graduate Student Awards Coordinator
Darling Marine Center
193 Clarks Cove Rd.
Walpole, ME 04573fax: 207-563-3119
Application deadline: February 15.
Notification deadline: March 15.
Questions about the program? Call 207-563-3146, ext 200.
Visiting Grads 2008
In 2008 Scott Large and Rachel Lasley returned for another field season, see below.
Scott, completed his M.S. degree from Texas A&M, Corpus Christi in 2007 and elected to pursue a Ph.D. degree in marine biology with advisor Dr. Lee Smee. His work at the DMC in 2008 picked up whre his 2007 studies left off, looking at abiotic conditions, such as flow, affect preditor-prey interactions and community structure.
Rachel returned to the DMC in 2008 to expand on her 2007 findings. Rachel's 2007 field experiments revealed that copepods have different levels of fertilizaton across modest temoral scales. She will be in residence for the next two year to further access these temporal patterns of mating success.
The fact that the DMC now awards multi-year awards allows me to complete an entire Ph.D. thesis here! It also allows me to address seasonal and annual fluctuations in my system and makes for a more complete story. Thanks, Rachel Lasley
Visiting Grads 2007 • Four graduate students received Verrill Awards
Rachel Lasley
Rachel Lasley is a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology pursuing a Ph.D. degree in biology. In Dr. Jeannette Yen’s landlocked Atlanta laboratory, Rachel has been studying how copepods use chemical signals to find females and mate. Working primarily with Temora longicornus, males of which are known to be able to detect, track and capture females, Rachel is trying to determine how these small crustaceans can differentiate the chemical trails of conspecifics and other copepod species.
But lab experiments only go so far. Rachel needed to know more about the real world copepod populations: densities, sex ratios and relative species abundance, to determine if the chemical signals she was finding in the lab could be relevant in the ocean. Since T. longicornus is easily obtainable off the DMC dock, Rachel and the DMC were a perfect fit.
For four months, July-October, Rachel made daily collections of copepods to establish the relative species abundance of the local copepod population. To get a grasp on how successful males were at sniffing-out females, she stained the eggs of gravid females to determine fertilization rates and hence reproductive success.
While at the DMC, Rachel interacted with many students and faculty. She shared her egg staining technique with students in Dr. Jeff Runge’s zooplankton ecology course.
Scott Large
Scott Large is a Master's student at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi studying marine ecology. His research questions focus on how the physical conditions of the rocky intertidal habitat affect the behavior between predators (green crabs) and their prey (dogwhelks), and how this contributes to community structure.
In the Flowing Seawater Laboratory, Scott used the DMC flume to conduct a series of assays to determine how flow velocity, turbulence, predator species and diet affects the behavior of a common intertidal snail, the dogwhelk. Scott used acoustic Doppler velocimeters (ADVs) to quantify the flow and turbulence in the DMC flume, as well as many sites along the Damariscotta River. In the lab he determined that as flow velocity increases dogwhelks can better detect a chemical cue from a predator resulting in more time spent within a refuge, However, in very high flow velocities the dogwhelks no longer respond to their predator. This information will be useful next field season when a larger, cooperative project between his advisor Dr. Lee Smee of TAMU-CC, and Dr. Geoff Trussell of Northeastern University, will explore how flow affects community structure in a large-scale field experiment in midcoast Maine.
David Delaney
David Delaney is a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University examining bioinvasions in marine ecosystems. Invasive species have been adapting to life in Maine waters for hundreds of years. Some invasives, like the European green crab, arrived almost 200 years ago. Others like the Asian shore crab, are more recent arrivals to Maine waters and their unknown potential impact on marine systems is cause for concern.
David is using these two species to create an "invasion spread model" by coupling similar models used in terrestrial systems with some novel modeling techniques. To this end, David had collected historical, anecdotal and quantifiable data on the location and abundance of each species. He also established a network of a thousand volunteers, which monitor 60 sites in seven states for invasive species.
David used his time at the DMC to improve monitoring techniques and to fill in gaps in his own data sets and national ones, which will help forecast the potential speed and spatial extent of bioinvasions and give managers a time frame in which to implement strategies for control/eradication.
Dashiell Pappas
Dashiell Pappas is interested in the ecology, evolution and behavior of marine mammals. She is a graduate student at the University of New England working towards a Master’s Degree in Marine Sciences with Dr. Kathryn Ono.
Grey seals are believed to compete with fishermen for commercially valuable species like cod and flounder, but the diet of these piscivorous animals has not been studied in the state of Maine. Dashiell’s thesis research aims to gain insight into the diet of gray seals and delineate the extent to which gray seals compete with fisheries in Maine waters.
This project however required access to seal habitats. Dashiell used her award to charter the R/V Ira C. to get to remote islands in Penobscot Bay. Leaving the dock at 4:30 in the morning with Captain Robbie Downs and a couple of field assistants, the team would approach the haul out sites and collect feces. By sieving the scat and collecting otoliths (fish ear bones) Dashiell will be able to determine the species and size of fish ingested by seals. Dashiell is also using a new technique in the field of dietary studies, fecal DNA, to look for prey species that do not traditionally show up when looking for fish otoliths.
Dashiell hopes the resulting data will yield information useful to fisheries management models, as well as gray seal ecology, feeding and foraging habits.
Visiting Grads 2006 • Three graduate students received Verrill Awards
Jonathan Fisher
Jonathan Fisher is a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania working with Dr. Peter Petraitis. His Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the dog whelk, Nucella lapillus, and its role as predator, prey and parasite host in the intertidal community.
Since 2004, Jon has surveyed intertidal areas of the Gulf of Maine from Nahant, MA to Cutler, ME to determine if the relative abundance of mussels and barnacles affect the prey choice of dog whelks. Using an immunological protocol he devised, Jon has been able to determine what individual whelks have been eating by testing the antigens present in their guts. While working with the dog whelks, Jon discovered that whelks parasitized by the shell-boring polychaete Polydora sp. had weaker shells that were easier to crack. This observation lead him to believe that parasitism may be an important, though cryptic, determinant of intertidal community structure.
This summer Jon conducted controlled feeding experiments in the DMC’s flowing seawater laboratory to test his field observations. One set of experiments will parallel his work with prey-specific antigen signals. A second set of experiments will test his idea that crabs (specifically the European green crab, Carcinus maenus) may preferentially select dog whelks with parasitized shells.
Tim Dwyer
Tim Dwyer is a graduate student at Northeastern University working on a Masters degree in Marine Biology with Dr. Geoffrey Trussell. He is interested in community ecology, biodiversity and bioinvasion. Tim’s thesis research aims to answer questions about how communities resist invasions of non-indigenous species. Specifically, if genetic diversity makes a population more resistant to non-indigenous invasives.
Though Northeastern has a marine lab in Nahant, MA, the DMC was the perfect place for Tim to carry out his research. In addition to the DMC having the necessary facilities to run concurrent laboratory and field experiments, previous work conducted at the DMC by Dr. Phil Yund (UMaine and University of New England) and graduate student Sheri Johnson provided genetic characterizations of the local ascidian populations.
In the DMC’s flowing seawater laboratory, Tim cultured Botryllus schlosseri (an established specie in the Gulf of Maine), Botrylloides violaceuis (a recent invader) on LEGO DUPLO® blocks. He then pieced together assemblages of DUPLOs consisting of four genotypes of Botryllus with Botrylloides randomly interspersed. These assemblages are being cultured in the lab and in the field, and changes in the colony tracked using quantitative digital and image analysis.
Jack Szczepanski
Jack Szczepanski, Jr. is finishing up his Masters degree at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA. Working with Dr. Joe Thompson, Jack is studying how the contractile properties of mantle muscles of squid change during growth. As the mantle muscle changes, it's function and resulting jetting efficiency changes. Hatchling squid jet with higher propulsion than thrust and adult squid jet with higher thrust than propulsion.
Using standard muscle physiological techniques and equipment, Jack set out to study how and why these ontogenetic changes occur in the mantle muscle of the long-finned squid, Loligo pealei. However, the Philadelphia lab proved to be hard place to keep specimens alive. Having spent the summer of 2005 in residence at the DMC with his advisor, Jack knew how valuable the squid-rich water of midcoast Maine and the flowing seawater facilities at the DMC were to the success of his thesis project.
As a Visiting Graduate Student at the DMC, Jack spent many evening squid jigging, collecting adult squid with hook and line. He also collected L. paelei egg cases from dock pilings near the lab using SCUBA. Jack hopes the data he collected on the contractile properties mantle muscles, sheds light not only on the of the ontogenetic changes of mantle muscles, but also on the differences of ontogenetic development of cephalopod muscle mechanics and vertebrate muscle mechanics.
Visiting Grads 2005
As a physical oceanography graduate student who has chosen an interdisciplinary path of study involving ocean physics, biology and optics, Darling Marine Center represents a “sweet spot” laboratory for the advancement of my research goals.
~Eric Rehm
Eric Rehm
Eric Rehm received the Henry Bryant Bigelow Award for Oceanography. He is a graduate student at the University of Washington Applied Physical Laboratory working with Dr. Eric D’Asaro and studying phytoplankton community composition, growth rates and primary productivity using some of the newest fluorescence sensors and remote sensing techniques.
Eric is no stranger to the DMC. He participated in the Ocean Optics class in 2004 and has kept in contact with Dr. Mary Jane Perry, one of the instructors of the course. He planned to return to the DMC in the summer of 2005 to work in Mary Jane’s optical oceanography lab and to participate in one of her cruises.
In addition to collaborating on projects in the Perry lab, Eric also wanted to further his own thesis research. The Bigelow Award enabled him to do just that. It provided extra ship time that allowed Eric to make specific measurements of phytoplankton fluorescence with newly available fluorescence sensors and to make in-water measurements of apparent and inherent optical properties of water, both in the estuary and offshore.
Becca Kordas
Becca Kordas received the Addison E. Verrill Award for Marine Biology. She is a Master’s student at California State University, Northridge, working with Dr. Steve Dudgeon. Though based in California, Becca is studying the timing of barnacle (Semibalanus balanoides) and rockweed (Ascophylum nodosum) settlement along a latitudinal gradient from Gloucester, MA to Quoddy Head, ME. She is testing the hypothesis that the early settlement of barnacles in the south provides substrate heterogeneity that serves as a refuge for rockweed germlings, and the later settlement of barnacles in the north smother the rockweed germlings.
The DMC was a convenient home base for Becca in the early spring and late summer when she set and collected settlement tiles at her test sites. Becca also held her tiles in seawater aquaria and processed samples in the flowing seawater laboratory.
