Dinoflagellates! These Bizarre Microorganisms Are Found All Over The Ocean, And Occasionally Freshwater

Very cool. My lab group also works with Emiliania huxleyi and EhVs.

Top: The Central Bank of Costa Rica in the capital, San José.

Middle: Fountain in San José.

Bottom: Statue of a worker in San José.

Preparing to return home

Mixed Feelings  

Looking forward

Experiences

I can’t believe that in less than two days, my semester abroad will be over and I’ll be headed back to the United States. At this point, there are things that I miss about the U.S. and I am looking forward to go back, but on the other hand, there are also things that I do not miss. Likewise, there are lots of things that I will miss about Costa Rica (food, host family, etc..) but there are also other things that I am ready to leave behind.  

I’m in the middle of my finals week and past the worst part. I’ve been ready to be done with classes for a while, especially after seeing friends from home finishing the semester a month ago. I am also ready to start my REU (like an internship for science students) that I have been figuring out the logistics of since mid-March. However, this means that I will be home for less than 24 hours before I leave (I live in South Central Pennsylvania and my REU is in Rhode Island), which means that I have barely any time to spend with my family and pets.  

I’ve had so many experiences abroad that I don’t even know where to begin to articulate them to family and friends. And you can only understand some of them if you were here to experience them for yourself. Throughout, I’ve gotten more comfortable with public transportation, which barely exists at home, and is one thing that I will miss but will be difficult to convey to my family since if we want to go somewhere at home, we just drive there ourselves. While it’s more convenient, it is also so nice to know that if you do a bit a research, you can get to just about anywhere in Costa Rica by bus. I’m also much more comfortable with Spanish after spending a little more than four months here.

In sum, I will miss Costa Rica and hope that I can come back in the not so distant future. I will miss my host family and friends.

Semana Santa

Tortuguero

Puerto Viejo

Beach

Other exchange students

This past week was Semana Santa, so in other words, it was spring break for us. Everyone in our program (there are 14 IFSA students in Costa Rica for the semester and two more that are in their second semester here) had travel plans. A few people went to places alone, one group traveled outside of Costa Rica, and I went with a group to Tortuguero and Puerto Viejo. There were six of us total, and the initial trip to Tortuguero lasted half a day.  

It concluded with a one hour boat ride to Tortuguero, which speaks to how secluded and isolated it is. The main road is a large sidewalk and there were no cars. The beach was never crowded, although the ocean was too rough to swim in. After a few days, I recognized people as we walked around the town. Tuesday morning, I unfortunately woke up with a headache due to a lack of food the day before. So I missed the beach day by trying to sleep it off, but after lunch, everyone else wanted to take a nap. Since I was feeling better, I decided to go to the beach alone (which was less than five minutes from the hotel- and it took less than 10 minutes to get from one shoreline to the other). It was so relaxing since there were not many people and at one point, a dog decided to hang out with me for five minutes. On Wednesday, we went on a canoe tour in el Parque Nacional de Tortuguero. We saw lots of birds and a two different points, we were a few feet away from caimans.  

We left Tortuguero Thursday morning and spent half the day traveling to Puerto Viejo. Puerto Viejo was basically the opposite of Tortuguero as far as tourist destinations go. Tortuguero was secluded, very little people (even though there were tourists), no cars. Puerto Viejo was crowded and is a popular destination for Semana Santa. And while I think the beach in Tortuguero was more beautiful than any in Puerto Viejo, the ocean was nicer in Puerto Viejo because it was relatively easy to find a good place to swim.  

Now, going into the trip, I thought that our group was probably relatively cohesive. But as in all groups (even small ones) there were tensions that slowly got worse as the week went on. First, let me give a little context. Out of the 14 of us, there are very clear tensions in the group. It is easy to tell who does not get along with someone else. Lines and groups formed relatively quickly since we spent so much time together in the beginning. But for Semana Santa, it seemed that the two main groups had divided. However, even within ours, there was tension. It was mainly little stuff that slowly increased as the week went on, but the important thing is that it did not prevent anyone from enjoying themselves on the trip.  

This is also kind of a teachable moment as well. Some people think that when they go abroad, they will meet and become great friends with awesome people. While this is not necessarily wrong, I think it is important to realize that just because you are abroad, it doesn't mean that people will leave stuff that leads to social problems and tensions in the U.S. My advice? Don't force friendships, especially if you don't make friends right away anyways, like me. Be yourself and focus on enjoying your time during this awesome experience. Chances are you will develop friendships and they will be natural ones since you have not forced anything (this is what I have done, and I have become friends with other IFSA students). And if you don’t, that's okay too. Remember, you only have a few months to take in as much of another country as possible and that may mean you don't have enough time to develop very strong friendships. And instead of trying to build friendships with other exchange students, try to build relationships with your host family and with native students. They are the ones who can really show you what their country has to offer.

To post about the miniature melo (Micromelo undatus) may seem a bit odd, as it is not a nudibranch but a closely-related sea snail! Its thinly-calcified shell is easily seen covering half of its back and is patterned with dazzling brown-red lines, a stark contrast to the blue, white-spotted body below. It lives in many tropic waters, whether that be Japan or Florida, and reaches about 3cm in length. It eats polychaete worms, and uses their toxins as its own.

One of the major threats to sea turtles is entanglement in fishing gear and other marine debris. 

Each year, threatened green sea turtles make their way to breeding grounds in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Although these islands are largely uninhabited and are protected by Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, ocean currents carry enormous quantities of trash here from around the world. More than 50 tons of debris enters monument waters each year! Here, fishing nets and other debris can entangle breeding adults and young hatchlings. 

You can help protect these and other sea turtles by reducing the amount of plastic you use and participating in beach and watershed cleanups. What actions will you take to protect 🐢? 

(Photo: Andy Collins/NOAA) 

[Image description: A green sea turtle rests on a beach. In the foreground is a pile of derelict fishing nets.]

THE PARADOX OF THE PLANKTON EXPLAINED BY COMPUTER SIMULATION

The paradox of the plankton results from the clash between the observed diversity of plankton and the competitive exclusion principle, which states that, when two species compete for the same resource, ultimately only one will persist and the other will be driven to extinction. With phytoplankton this is different, despite the limited range of resources, as is light, nitrate, phosphate, silicic acid, iron, a large number of species coexist, all competing for the same sorts of resources.

Now, a new math model explains such biodiversity. To understand this paradox researchers created a conceptual model for a theoretical community. Where each member of that community consumes one type of resource, and consuming it causes the production of exactly two new resources. Also, any new member could only survive if there is an open niche, or if it was better to exploit a resource than a current member. But with this computer simulation, researchers discovered that its simple rules led to a virtual community that, like the bacterial or phytoplankton communities, this hypotethical community was diverse and stable, and in fact became increasingly stable to as organisms diversified.

Resource competition and metabolic commensalism -where one organism benefits from the other without affecting it- drive a healty and diverse ecosystem. Researchers demonstrate that even when supplied with just one resource, ecosystems can exhibit high diversity and increasing stability.  Despite early stages where massive die-offs scenes occured, as time passed and community grew more stable, these became less common. Affortunately to phytoplancton species, two communities under ideal conditions can develop so differently from one another, without producing extintions.

Photo:  Gordon T. Taylor.

Reference: Goyal and Maslov, 2018. Diversity, Stability, and Reproducibility in Stochastically Assembled Microbial Ecosystems, Physical Review Letters 

Costa Rica’s flag

When wood turns into glitter

Many moons ago, in the area that is now Nevada ancient woodlands were living through events that would result in some stunning pieces that grace museums around the world. Some 14 million years ago in the Miocene, the area was thickly forested rather than displaying the arid environment of today. It was also much closer to sea level, since the area has been extensively uplifted since then, due to tectonic stresses caused by the subduction of the Pacific and Farallon plates under the North American one. The area also saw intense subduction related volcanism (ongoing along the USA’s west coast to this day), which periodically covered the forests in silica rich ash. As groundwater interacted with the magma below, weathering the layers of ash into clays, it dissolved silica, precipitating it when conditions such as temperature and pressure changed, replacing the ash covered trees with opal, sometimes so clearly that every cell is visible. While not really suitable for jewellery use due to its tendency to crack as it dries out (called crazing in the trade), these rare logs from the Virgin Valley of Nevada make for stunning collector’s specimens

Keep reading

Blooms in the Baltic

Every summer, phytoplankton – microscopic plant-like organisms – spread across the North Atlantic, with blooms spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles. Nutrient-rich, cooler waters tend to promote more growth among marine plants and phytoplankton than is found in tropical waters. Blooms this summer off Scandinavia seem to be particularly intense.

On July 18, 2018, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired a natural-color image of a swirling green phytoplankton bloom in the Gulf of Finland, a section of the Baltic Sea. Note how the phytoplankton trace the edges of a vortex; it is possible that this ocean eddy is pumping up nutrients from the depths.

Though it is impossible to know the phytoplankton type without sampling the water, three decades of satellite observations suggest that these green blooms are likely to be cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), an ancient type of marine bacteria that capture and store solar energy through photosynthesis (like plants).

In recent years, the proliferation of algae blooms in the Baltic Sea has led to the regular appearance of “dead zones” in the basin. Phytoplankton and cyanobacteria consume the abundant nutrients in the Baltic ¬and deplete the oxygen. According to researchers from Finland’s University of Turku, the dead zone this year is estimated to span about 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles).

Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/2uLK4aZ

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