About This Project
I am studying the small swimming snails known as pteropods that live along the US West Coast. These "sea butterflies" are an important food source for many animals including Salmon. In 2016 I traveled by boat from California to British Columbia collecting pteropods. I have collected animals from many locations and will be using next-generation sequencing to understand if these animals have the molecular tools necessary to deal with future ocean acidification.
Ask the Scientists
Join The DiscussionWhat is the context of this research?
This project aims at understanding what molecular tools pteropods have to deal with future ocean conditions. To best understand this, I sampled pteropods from a variety of locations along the US West Coast from California to British Colombia. By studying pteropods from many different environmental conditions, we can use comparative transcriptomics to understand the range of molecular responses that pteropods have today. From these results we will be better able to predict how they will deal with future ocean conditions.
What is the significance of this project?
This project will help researchers from around the world who are trying to understand the effects ocean acidification will have. Pteropods have been identified as a sentinel species for ocean acidification due mainly to how their shells dissolve when the pH of the ocean goes down. Along the West Coast there have been studies that have shown the majority of pteropods in our waters already have highly dissolved shells. Using a transcriptomic approach to study pteropods will help us understand if their dissolving shell is a true stress on them. If it is a stress (and evidence suggests it is) then it has the potential to impact their reproductive success and suitability as a food source for other marine animals.
What are the goals of the project?
The goals of this project is to perform RNA sequencing on 18 samples collected off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. With these sequencing data we will be able to identify the genes pteropods have at their disposal across a wide range of environmental conditions.
Budget
These funds will pay for the reagents needed to extract and read the genomic information that will help us understand if pteropods have the molecular tools required to deal with ocean acidification. I will specifically be measuring what genes pteropods are using in different environments. From the collections that I made along the US West Coast, there are 6 interesting locations that cross many different oceanographic conditions. These include ocean pH, temperature and salinity. With these funds I will extract genomic material from 3 replicates from each of these locations and sequencing all 18 samples on two lanes of an Illumina HiSeq 4000. With these samples, I will be able to measure what molecular tools pteropods have to deal with a variety of environmental conditions.
Endorsed by
Meet the Team
Kevin Johnson
In 2012 I joined Gretchen Hofmann’s lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara with a focus on combining molecular techniques with physiological and morphological measurements to understand how marine organisms respond to ocean acidification and ocean warming. As a molecular ecologist, I am interested in understanding how the environment shapes and organisms molecular phenotype. Along the US West Coast, I am using comparative transcriptomics to better understand how the pelagic marine snails known as sea butterflies will fare in future ocean conditions.
Lab Notes
Nothing posted yet.
Project Backers
- 7Backers
- 4%Funded
- $467Total Donations
- $66.71Average Donation