Steve Vollmer and Geoff Trussell: Snail travels unknown evolutionary path
Biology graduate student Meredith Doellman and faculty researchers from Northeastern’s Marine Science Center in Nahant, Mass., have discovered that a specific species of snail has a much more complex evolutionary history than previously thought.
Doellman worked with biology professors Geoff Trussell and Steve Vollmer and discovered that a marine periwinkle snail species, Littorina saxatillis, has defied simple textbook classifications of speciation — that is, the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution — by combining two types of speciation, an evolutionary strategy not seen before.
To read the full article, please visit this link.
Annette Govindarajan Featured in Journal of Plankton Research
Earth and Environmental Sciences would like to congratulate Annette Govindarajan on her article featured in the Journal of Plankton Research titled “A molecular phylogeny of the Thaliacea.”
To read the full article, please visit this link.
Congratulations to our EES 2011 Condit Award Winners!
Earth and Environmental Sciences would like to congratulate the following students:
-Liam Holland (B.A. in Environmental Studies and Political Science)
-Yanina Kupava (B.S. in Environmental Science)
-Kelsey Boss (B.A. in Environmental Studies and International Affairs)
The Condit Award was established in 1940 through the generosity of Sears B. Condit. The award is presented annually to graduating seniors with the top 100 GPAs in the University. Each award carries a stipend as well as a certificate of achievement.
Annette Govindarajan: 3Qs: Lionfish roar into tropical waters
Invasive species can wreak havoc on ecosystems, like the Atlantic Ocean off the Southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean. Researchers have struggled in recent years to combat the presence of lionfish — which are native to the Indo-Pacific waters. Annette Govindarajan, an instructor in Northeastern University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, explores the dangers that this fish and other invasive species present.
To view her discussion on the invasive lionfish species, please view the article.
Dan Douglass: Brutal Boston winter? About average so far
Boston has been bludgeoned with wicked weather this winter, and after routinely shoveling driveways and trudging through snow banks, people wonder if there is an end in sight after the third-snowiest January ever and another storm to kick-start February. Dan Douglass, a lecturer in Northeastern University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, breaks down how this winter compares for overall precipitation, and weighs in on climate change for good measure.
For the rest of the article, please visit this link.
Gwilym Jones: An Interview
Biology Professor Gwilym S. Jones has won the Excellence in Teaching Award three times, in 1987, 1992, and 1994. Dr. Jones has taught at Northeastern for 25 years, and he is currently the director of the Center for Vertebrate Studies. Among other items, the research collection contains 453 species and 40,000 specimens of mammals.
The CEUT talked with Professor Jones to see if we could learn about his philosophy and style of teaching. After settling down at a long table laden with shoeboxes filled with seal skeletons, the interview with Dr. Jones began with him talking about why he loves what he does.
To view the full article, please visit this link.
Wiliam Detrich: Warming seas may imperil Antarctic fish
William Detrich, professor of biochemistry and marine biology in the College of Science at Northeastern University, has been awarded $639,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance his research on the effects of global warming on Antarctic fish and the role of these fish in the Antarctic food chain.
For roughly 8 million to 10 million years, the seawater in the southern ocean surrounding Antarctica held a stable temperature of -2 °C (28 °F). But now, due to global warming, the seawater is rapidly heating up, Detrich said.
“The ancestors of today’s Antarctic fish evolved so that the frigid temperature was quite comfortable,” he said. “In fact, their body temperature matched that of the water. But now their habitat is experiencing unprecedented and rapid warming.”
To view the rest of this article, please visit this link.
Rebeca Rosengaus: Ant Cclonies share disease resistance
A Northeastern University biology professor and her team of student researchers have discovered that the social feeding habits of carpenter ants reduce disease transmission and widespread infection within the colony, in much the same way that a mother’s milk helps her child boost his immune system against foreign organisms.
The results of the study were published in a June issue of Biology Letters, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Although the research focused on social insects, the team’s findings could eventually be applied to solving complex problems in fields of study as diverse as human disease and salmon farming, says coauthor Rebeca Rosengaus, an associate professor of biology. Brian Lejeune, a third-year chemical engineering major and biology minor, and Northeastern alumnus Casey Hamilton, now a graduate student in biology at Towson University, collaborated on the study.
To view the rest of this article, please visit this link.
Jennifer Cole: The Science Behind Earthquakes
A series of major earthquakes have struck countries in the Caribbean, South America and Asia, causing catastrophic damage. Large-scale relief efforts are in place in the hardest-hit nations, including Haiti and Chile. Northeastern earth and environmental sciences professor Jennifer Cole discusses what causes earthquakes and how one natural disaster can lead to another.
To read the full article, please visit this link.
Martin Ross: Fire-and-Iceland
Iceland, one of the most active volcanic centers on earth and the only point where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rises above the sea, also is partially covered by several spectacular ice caps. For these reasons, Iceland is an outstanding natural geologic laboratory, making it an easy selection as the topic for a joint Geology/Honors Program course I and three other faculty members taught last spring to twenty undergraduates. The culmination of the course was a two-week field trip through the wilds of Iceland this September.
To read the full article, please visit this link.
Joseph Ayers: Robotic bee-havior
A Northeastern University neurobiologist will bring his expertise in animal robotics to a five-year, $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Expeditions research project to develop robobees that mimic the communal feeding behavior of bee colonies.
Biology professor Joseph Ayers will collaborate with a team of researchers from Harvard University to develop micro flying robots with the technology to emulate the bees’ brain, body and collective behavior.
To read the full article, please visit this link.
Donald Cheney: Gifts from the Seaweed
“Seaweeds? You study seaweeds? What on earth for?” That’s the typical response I get whenever I tell someone what I do for a living.
By and large, people don’t have a very good impression of seaweeds. They think they’re just some stinking, slimy nuisance that washes up on clean sandy beaches. Most people don’t realize how important seaweeds are, both ecologically and commercially. In reality, seaweeds are crucial primary producers in oceanic food webs. They’re also valuable sources of food, micronutrients, and products for the pharmaceutical industry.
To read the full article, please visit this link.
Matthew Bracken: Publishes Findings on Marine Biodiversity
Marine scientists have grown increasingly concerned over the loss of marine biodiversity and the need to understand the consequences of these changes has become vital. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has published the findings of a study using seaweed species richness co-authored by Matthew Bracken, assistant professor of biology at the Marine Science Center at Northeastern University.
Titled “Complementarity in marine biodiversity manipulations: Reconciling divergent evidence from field and mesocosm experiments”, the paper contends that short-term experiments detect only a subset of possible mechanisms that operate in the field over the longer term because they lack sufficient environmental heterogeneity to allow expression of niche differences.
To view the rest of this article, please visit this link.
William Detrich: The Birth and Death Genes
In a video that premiered at the National Association of Biology Teachers meeting in California, “The Birth and Death of Genes,” Professor William Detrich (right) explains genetic changes that cause antarctic ice fish to lose the ability to produce hemoglobin. The icefish is an unusual fish found in Antarctica that is able to survive in some of the coldest waters on earth.
Professor Detrich and a team of 30 scientists from around the world were on board the Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel for the ICEFISH (International Collaborative Expedition to Collect and Study Fish Indigenous to Sub-Antarctic Habitats) 2004 Cruise. The mission of the 61-day cruise, which left from Punta Arenas, Chile, on May 17th, and docked at Cape Town, South Africa, on July 17th, was to collect specimens of lower latitude fishes in order to relate the evolution, physiology, biochemistry, and population dynamics of high latitude Antarctic fishes of the suborder Nototheniodei to the transitional fish fauna of the subAntarctic.
Click here to view the video.
To read the article published in the Antarctic Sun, please visit this link.