Showing posts with label Nick Schulte. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick Schulte. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Algae Met a Bear: Algae where you'd least expect them!

January 14, 2015 0
Polar bear! In the EVERGLADES?!?!
So how many of you know the poem "Algy"?

"Algy met a bear.
The bear met Algy.
The bear was bulgy.
The bulge was Algy."


I think my dad sang "Algy" to me when I was a little tyke, though in my 3-year-old wisdom I must have taken "Algy" as "Algae" and from then on aspired to become a phycologist. Now, some attribute this verse to Ogden Nash, while others chalk it up to Anonymous (that great and varied writer!). And while this verse may be humorous, it's not truly nonsense (though this sentence is). I've seen analysis of Algy and the bear as an allegory for existentialist being (what does it mean "to be"?), while others just say (spoiler alert) that the bear ate Algy. BUT, I think they're all wrong as a result of a translational error where "Algy" should be "Algae" as my 3-year-old self clearly realized. THEREFORE:

Looks a little green 'round the edges.
"Algae met a bear.
The bear met algae."

These lines are clearly discussing the cyanobacteria that grow in polar bear hair fibers! That's right - there's a type of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that lives in the hollow hairs of polar bears. This isn't a natural phenomenon, as the cold habitat of polar bears prevents algae from normally colonizing polar bear fur, but in warmer zoos algae find the hair follicles of the bears a cozy place to set up shop (and turn the polar bears what some think is a sickly "green around the edges").

"The bear was bulgy.
The bulge was algae."

All pictures are a different scale: 1. Polar bear hair (tiny dots are the algae), 2. Close-up of the tiny Aphanocapsa dots, 3. Super close-up of Aphanocapsa montana, aka "the bulge". From Lewin et al. 1981.
These lines are, likewise, clearly categorizing the specific type of the cyanobacteria in those hairs. Lewin et al. in 1981 found that the algae living in polar bear hair were cyanobacteria of the order Chroococcales, resembling the species Aphanocapsa montana. Individuals of this species are unicellular and spherical, described as globules and gelatinous. I think Anonymous added "bulgy" to that description!

Glad we cleared that up.

But from here we can go completely crazy. You know that greenish tinge of sloths? Algae. (This one's really quite cool, too. Sloth hairs have cracks that allow rain to saturate the follicle, which in turn allows algae to grow hydroponically - in this case a green alga named Trichophilus welckeri is most common.

There's a really quite hilarious and informative recent study by Pauli et al. 2014 and article that summarizes a very "crappy" pathway among sloths, moths, and algae - check it out and impress your friends! Make that one sloth-obsessive think twice about that love for adorable sloths. And even a new genus and species of red has been described from sloth hair!)
Cute obligatory sea otter.

I think I also promised a picture of a sea otter. You know what? Algae in their hair, too.

And if we look beyond hair, we see all sorts of epizoic algae (algae growing on animals): on shells, turtles, lizards, manatees! Moral of the story? Wash your hair. Algae are here to take over the world.

Oh? You don't see the relevance of this to graduate research in the Everglades? Well, I could attribute this to the strain of my M.S. research finally getting to me, propelling me into babbling analysis of children rhymes and my research project (I wonder if I could squeeze this into a chapter of interdisciplinary applications of the research...). But, really, I was thinking up ways of introducing those that need no introduction: ALGAE! Pop quiz for name recognition:

Agar, biofuels, harmful algal blooms, ice cream, Naked Juice, nori, oxygen, Spirulina.

This author's personal favorite. And,
yes, it does have carrageenan.
And apparently half the fat. Tasty algae.
If any of those sound familiar, you've likely come across algae in some way or another, either as a product using some algae extract (e.g., carrageenan, a thickening agent, is used in many ice creams and is extracted from the red alga Chondrus crispus) or some other basic function (e.g., algae produce over half of the oxygen in the atmosphere!). Sylvia Lee's already written about "What is algae?" so I won't elaborate beyond "the bulge" (as above). But, instead, what's the big deal about algae in the Everglades? Well, you're going to have to stay tuned for next week's (?) episode of Nick's Wonderful World of Algae. I see you all waiting as eagerly for it as for new episodes of The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, etc. But what about The Walking Algae or Game of Cyanos?

A teaser: I mentioned algae on manatees. Dr. Tom Frankovich from FIU has actually looked into diatoms that live on manatees 'round these parts - super cool stuff. You may have noticed manatees that look a bit mossy. Let's amend that to "algae-y" and start singing, "Algae met a manatee. The manatee met algae." And they lived happily ever after.
D'aww. From: Fish and Wildlife Service
Tags # Algae # Carbon # climate change Continue Reading
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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The Wonderful World of Diatoms

November 18, 2014 0


I admit that I ended that last post a bit unclear. But diatoms, it should be said, aren’t (or, rather, shouldn't be said since I shouldn't use double negatives. Ah, well.).


http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/diatomist-film-matthew-killip-premiere/?_php=true&_type=blogs&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=0
Not physically, that is; you see, diatom cell walls are made of silica (glass), and that feature is actually incredibly important (not to mention gives rise to beautiful 'micromanipulations' like this one by Klaus Kemp - different colors in part because of different thicknesses of their glass). Diatoms arose between 180 and 225 million years ago – youngsters in the algal world (compare that to the geezer cyanobacteria of 3+ billion – way vintage) – and in so doing utilized an under-used, widely available resource that set them apart. The genealogy (or “systematics”) of diatoms has since expanded to include anywhere from 20,000 to over 1 million species that span almost every aquatic or semi-aquatic habitat imaginable – oceans, lakes, rivers, moss, soil. In those habitats they can be suspended in the water column, anchored onto plants or rocks, and moving through the soil. And the species diversity of diatoms is mirrored by their physical diversity: some are round (‘centric’ – shaped like a barrel), others needle-like (‘pennate’), others bent or otherwise contorted (‘yogis’ – don’t quote me on that, though! Those are really just rebellious pennates), all of them in a variety of shapes and sizes. They are unicellular (just like, say, a red blood cell. Only they can be just as small as a red blood cell [~7 micrometers] or over 20 times as large!). Their glass cell walls are adorned with tiny holes in very distinct patterns, glass thickness varies, spines might protrude, a slit used to move may vary in shape and placement. And what’s cool is that you can use all these miniscule features to differentiate species based on appearance alone – quickly and relatively inexpensively (with the right training and tools – mostly a good microscope and a literal library of reference material. I hope you know German, though [the language of some of the best reference texts]!). So the take-home is that diatoms can be identified based on species’ unique cell wall ornamentation (a Who’s Who Among Diatoms in American Rivers and Lakes, if you will. Now that's a taxonomy textbook title!), and that allows us to figure out who’s where and why.
Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to.

And understanding who’s where lets us use diatoms as very dependable indicators for ecosystem changes. Diatoms are sensitive and like what they like (what's that on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? ISFP?). They often fill very specific roles in their communities, and if something happens to the environment – changing temperatures, physical disturbance, nutrient enrichment – then the diatoms, and other algae, are among the first to respond. So you can catch the effects of, say, agricultural runoff into a lake early on if you look at how the algae changes. And arguably the best algae for noting that change is the diatoms because of their diversity, ID-ability, and preservability. Because glass tends to linger in most conditions we can even take a soil core of that 'polluted' lake and examine the diatoms from years past to then model and understand what past conditions were like! Their cell wall ornamentation is preserved, allowing us to still identify their dead ‘shells’ (properly, “frustules”) – a natural preservation that we replicate in the lab by killing modern diatoms so we can look at just their glass frustules to make identification easier. Talk about bio-indicators (and cruelty to diatoms). And that diversity within and among habitats allows us to use diatoms to answer some very fundamental ecological questions involving metacommunity diversity and microbial dispersal and biogeography (I know, I know: those will be discussed in entirely separate posts to come).

And I’m just getting started (“Oh, no,” you’re thinking.). I’ll be quick. Going back to the uninformative reasons of why they’re awesome, some clarification. Diatoms alone produce around anywhere from 25 to 40% of Earth’s oxygen and are large carbon sinks (translation: they gobble up that pesky carbon dioxide and give us oxygen, free of charge. So generous!). They produce oil droplets that are delicacies for primary consumers (as well as nutritious – think Flintstones gummies good) – and they have potential to be used for biofuels (they’re trying to squeeze the oil out of them. Literally.). When they died off en masse thousands of years ago (diatom genocide! Where was the UN?!) their graveyards eventually became reserves of  


(or diatomaceous earth), which is great if you like clean teeth (as an abrasive) and beer (as filters) and don’t like ants in your house (natural pesticide). But even when they’re alive some species secrete vast amounts of 'mucus' around them that invite all sorts of other creatures (mainly bacteria, fungi, and/or other algae) to party and form a biofilm, which have even more ecosystem benefits (outside of making you fall on your face in a lake)! Imagine coating yourself in your own snot and letting stay anything that wants to use, eat, or add onto that snot (not quite a perfect example of the intricacies, but what a vivid picture for the general idea! That makes the "affectionate" term of "rock snot" for biofilms of the diatom Didymosphenia geminata even apter, eh?).

Didymosphenia geminata biofilm
I realize that all of this may be a little too general to be overly informative, but my hope is that it piques your interest in learning a bit more about diatoms – whether scientist or enthusiast. In the Everglades we’re using diatoms to look at ecosystem-scale effects of sea level rise on the Everglades. Diatom indicator species of nutrient enrichment are used in assessing the efficacy of Everglades restoration and conservation. We see poignant applications of diatom science right here in South Florida that are visible all the way up to reports to Congress! (Mastogloia smithii Goes To Washington, anyone? Though Sylvia Lee may have something to say about that nomenclature!)

But in all this excitement about diatoms it’s important to recognize algae as a whole. Cf. T. jeffersonii (invalid, illegitimate, and insane taxonomy?) doesn’t agree with discrimination, remember. So to rectify this miscarriage of algal civil rights, stay tuned for the next installment of the Wonderful World of Algae! (Will there be death? Will there be destruction [of tasteful writing, yes! Of algae…?]? Will there be adorable pictures of sea otters on an Everglades research page? Find out next week!)

This blog post was written by Nick Schulte, a Master's student in Evelyn Gaiser's lab at FIU.
Tags # Algae # Diatoms # Ecology Continue Reading
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Thursday, September 11, 2014

Okeechobee or Okoboji? An Everglades Student’s Corny Tale

September 11, 2014 0

This post was written by Nick Schulte, a Master's student in Evelyn Gaiser's lab at Florida International University. 

So where would you go to study how Everglades algae respond to increased nutrients from sea level rise? The Florida Everglades, right? That’s what I thought. But I went to Iowa.


Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, more specifically, on the shores of Lake Okoboji (yes, I still confuse it with that big lake in the northern ‘Glades). A bit clearer but still unhelpful? This summer I attended two courses at Lakeside: Ecology and Systematics of Diatoms and Ecology and Systematics of Freshwater Algae. In that order – specific to general, that’s how it’s normally done, right? Start looking at the fineries of a specific group of algae (“the algae that live in glass houses”, or diatoms) and then see how they fit into the bigger picture of general phycology (“phykos” for “seaweed”). It actually makes a lot sense, especially when my research pays particular attention to the changes among the diatoms within algae communities in the Everglades (now I’m finally getting to the point). And it just so happens that the place to learn about diatoms is 1,800 miles from South Florida (or a 26-hour car drive, but who counted?). So while many of my peers were up to their knees in peat or swarmed by mosquitoes in the mangroves of the Everglades this summer field season, I was swarmed by mosquitoes by the lake, up to my knees in what many would call “lake scum”, and up to my eyes in diatoms in Iowa. And it was excellent.

Life at a biological field station is an experience completely its own, and as such it’ll get its own blog post! But suffice it to say, here, that it facilitates connections that are hard-pressed to forge elsewhere – connections to the research, to faculty, to peers, to the community, to nature. And it is my good fortune that Gene Stoermer established a “Diatom Clinic” at Lakeside in 1963 and that this course has persisted for 52 years, taught by Gene, Charlie Reimer, Gene again, and now Mark Edlund and Sarah Spaulding – all rock stars in diatom science committed to grooming new generations of diatomists. And the intrigue and utility of diatoms (boy, what a boring book title – we’ll have to think of something better) is such that students from all over the world – literally – come to this Great Lakes region of Iowa each summer to gain a proper education and exposure to the wonderful world of diatoms (getting there. But, really, “Great Lakes region of Iowa”?! Whoever heard of such a thing? Sounded like science fiction to me.). The class is capped at ten students per summer (one four-week session), and this year we came from Miami, Delaware, Colorado, Utah, MinnesOta, Montana, Ontario, and Colombia – with some old class T.A.s who can’t get enough from Arkansas and Macedonia. In short, students and professionals come from all over for a very focused class on a very focused group of algae that many people probably don’t know exist.

But, why? Why diatoms? If you can’t even see these microalgae, why even care? Why not care more about the cursed algae causing that green scum layer on my mom’s supposed-to-be-blue pool? Or those algae being used to solve our fossil fuel dependency? Well, we do care about those – I think cf. Thomas jeffersonii is keyed out as having “all algae are created equal” in its striae pattern (who wants to erect that genus?!) – but some pay particular attention to diatoms for a variety of reasons. And you can see diatoms – but few with the unaided eye. But when a bunch of 10 µm cells (1/1000thof a millimeter) hold a party they can be seen collectively (but only if you want to be seen as a party crasher). If you’ve ever fallen ungracefully into a lake because you slipped on those muddy rocks, don’t curse the mud but the diatoms and the mucilage they produce. Actually, I wouldn’t curse them – maybe reprimand them for their slippery inconvenience – but get to know them (especially now that you’re intimately acquainted, having fallen face first into a nice community [biofilm] of them). When you get to know them you realize that diatoms. are. awesome.

              E Pleurosira Unum? Creepy.

Diatoms are generically and specifically diverse (see what I did there?), widespread, productive, and tasty; they throw great house parties (just don’t throw rocks – their cell walls are glass after all); and they keep on giving after they’ve stopped living. They’re the algae you want to get to know at a party, the ones that always have your back and will give you good guidance in times of trouble (just like Mother Mary). They’re your best friends in the algae world.

Want to know why? Why choose diatoms over beautiful kelp forests or tasty nori (Porphyra, a red alga ‘seaweed’) or nutritious Spirulina (cyanobacteria)? Will Nick be held accountable for such a preposterous claim (after all, who 
doesn’t love sea otters?!)? Will we ever get to the “wonder” in the Wonderful World of Diatoms? Tune in next week for even more humorless asides and frustrating skirting around the facts (we are in a bit of a political lull, though!). Tune in next week for these answers and more!

(In all seriousness, thanks for reading this far, and I really do hope you’ll continue with this series!)




Tags # Algae # Diatoms # Ecology Continue Reading
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