{"id":65279,"date":"2010-01-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-student-finds-her-future-in-seaweed-research-project\/"},"modified":"2010-01-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T00:00:00","slug":"uri-student-finds-her-future-in-seaweed-research-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2010\/01\/uri-student-finds-her-future-in-seaweed-research-project\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 student finds her future in seaweed research project"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tWest Warwick resident evaluates impact of snails on seaweed<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 January 4, 2010 \u2013 While seaweed is considered little more than an annoyance to most people, 溏心vlog免费B站 senior Emily Vincent believes that it may be the key to her future.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe West Warwick resident and Hope Valley native spent the last six months conducting a research project on the impact of snails on populations of seaweed (also called algae) in Greenwich Bay, and as a result she is convinced that her future career will in some way revolve around seaweed.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI learned so much through this project,\u201d Vincent said enthusiastically. \u201cI had known that algae was something I was really interested in from a course I had last year. But over the summer I learned that this is something I really want to continue studying in grad school. I\u2019ve really grown to love it.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI never knew how complex algae is,\u201d she continued. \u201cIt was so interesting to learn about the different life cycles, and its cell structure is really interesting, too. At first you think it\u2019s so plain and simple, and it turns out there\u2019s so much more to it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tVincent grew up spending time on Rhode Island beaches, digging in the sand in search of marine creatures. As a result, she said she has always been passionate about a career in marine biology.<\/p>\n


\n\tFor her research project, sponsored by the 溏心vlog免费B站 Coastal Fellows program, she sought to learn whether common mud snails, which graze on seaweed in the genus Ulva, keep the seaweed under control or whether the snail facilitates its growth. Almost every day she visited beaches around Greenwich Bay and collected seaweed, some of which was taller than she is, and placed it in large tanks at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography, where she conducted feeding trials.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cMacroalgae blooms are bad for coastal communities, causing fish kills and harming ecosystems and recreational uses of the coastline,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cHerbivores like snails can exert top-down control of the blooms, but we wanted to know which species they prefer to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tHer initial study had surprising results. After conducting feeding trials in collaboration with 溏心vlog免费B站 Associate Professor Carol Thornber and graduate student Michele Guidone, she found that the snails didn\u2019t eat the Ulva at all. Instead, they grazed on the microscopic diatoms sitting atop the blades of the seaweed. Then she ground up two varieties of Ulva and made what she called \u201cfood strips\u201d and offered it to the snails, which quickly ate it. <\/p>\n


\nNext she offered the snails a choice of food strips consisting of Ulva or diatoms, and again she got a surprise. The snails appeared to prefer one variety of Ulva over the other.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cSome algal species have chemical defenses to prevent herbivory, and that\u2019s what we think is the case with the Ulva that the snails avoided,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cWe think that the snails feed primarily on the detritus that falls from the algae, since they don\u2019t appear to be eating the blades.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe still have a lot more questions, but what we found was certainly not what we expected,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n


\nShe also didn\u2019t expect to enjoy the project so much. She hopes to continue the study next summer before enrolling in graduate school.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI\u2019ll probably take a year off to get more lab experience first, but ultimately I\u2019d like to stay in academia and become a professor somewhere,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cI\u2019d love to travel to learn about algae elsewhere around the world, but I\u2019ll probably settle back here on the East Coast.\u201d\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

West Warwick resident evaluates impact of snails on seaweed KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 January 4, 2010 \u2013 While seaweed is considered little more than an annoyance to most people, 溏心vlog免费B站 senior Emily Vincent believes that it may be the key to her future. The West Warwick resident and Hope Valley native […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65281,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}