Another Small Side Project

This week, I spent a lot of time working on a small side project where I am modeling how microplastics within the Mississippi Sound and Bight flow through the food web. The ecosystem modeling software that we use in the lab allows users to evaluate more than just predator-prey dynamics, and the Ecotracer module allows for tracking pollution through the modeled ecosystem. I originally wanted to incorporate this idea into my NSF postdoctoral fellowship, but that project did not get funded, so instead I am working on this as a side project. One challenge with this task, however, is that it requires a lot of data. I need to first build a food web with all the life history traits and diet compositions for the organisms, plus provide a time series of data for the biomasses of each model group. These steps are ones I've completed for our ongoing models but I have made this process more challenging by including groups that we don't already have in our Mississippi Sound and Bight model - notably, nematodes, benthic copepods, polychaetes, oligochaetes, and sea turtles. Then, I have to get data on microplastic contamination within the model groups and data on microplastic contamination within the water column and the sediment. This last piece is much easier than the faunal contamination data, since multiple groups have reported microplastic pollution transported by the Mississippi River, within the Mississippi Sound, Mobile Bay, and there are also a few sediment studies in the area.

This side project is combining my nematodes and microplastics work with my new modeling work so it is a fun challenge. I am hoping that through this project I learn about what data would be helpful for future researchers doing microplastic trophic transfer work and to see how this type of modeling may be useful for my own future career. I don't have any pictures of this work yet because I have spent my time finding data, entering numbers, and making spreadsheets, but stay tuned because I hope to have a balanced model soon and then I can start showing the next steps of this work.