Culturing planktic foraminifera on Catalina IslandI've had four extended field seasons on Catalina Island culturing planktic foraminifers. During my first field season (2011), my goal was simple: collect deep dwelling planktic foraminifers using a plankton net and get them to survive, grow, and complete their life cycle in the laboratory. We had great success getting the deep dwellers N. dutertrei and N. pachyderma to grow in culture during our first culture season in 2011 despite the fact that the culture conditions were designed for warmer, shallower species. After that first season, I was funded (with Ann Russell and Tessa Hill) to continue lab culture projects of the deeper dwelling species, concentrating our efforts at both the Catalina Island and at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory (the Bodega project was lead by Dr. Catherine Davis for her PhD research). We also investigated controls on trace element variability in both spinose and non-spinose species (e.g. what controls Mg/Ca banding and other sub-micron scale heterogeneity).
Our goals with culturing the deeper dwelling foraminifera are to calibrate their geochemistry with temperature, pH, and salinity and improve our understanding of their ecology and ontogeny using plankton tow data, CTD data, and observations of the foraminifera while in culture. We have VASTLY improved our culturing techniques and have gone from 50-90% post-collection mortality to nearly ZERO! Read about some of the culture projects, that included:
Below are some images of the deep dwellers captured in 2011. Additional pictures from the summer of 2014 and 2015 are posted in the blog. Learn about our Taiwan field projects HERE. Learn about our Coastal Oregon projects HERE. |
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