Can't Stop, Won't Stop (Unless There's a Hurricane)

After a one-week research hiatus, thanks to Hurricane Idalia (which didn't cause damage to my area in Florida but threatened to), I was back at the lab this week working on the next phase of the mesocosm research. Like the first chapters of my dissertation, I have to wash all the samples and extract all the fauna, though it's more time consuming now given that I have more sediment than usual (7 versus 5 cm in each sample). Additionally, a new aspect of this work is an emphasis on the whole sediment community rather than a focus on the meiofauna size class. Macrofauna, animals slightly larger than meiofauna--usually 500 micrometers and larger (up to a few centimeters)--perform many of the same bioturbation activities as their smaller counterparts. Therefore, their presence in the sediment communities and specifically the number and size of these animals can drastically shift the bioturbation activity across the sediment communities. Since I used natural sediment communities for this experiment, communities collected from individual sediment core deployments, I don't know that the starting communities were all the same and the differences within these communities may have contributed to differences in the bioturbation and oxygen penetration within the experiment. Rather than an extra byproduct of my research, these fauna are an integral component of the data analysis for this final chapter of my dissertation, and you can see the start of the sample processing in this week's photo. 

I will complete sediment washing and processing next week, after which I move on to the next step which is counting, slide making, identifying, and measuring. This next step will help set the timeline for the completion of this work, as the number of fauna within each sediment sample and their identities will inform how long biomass measurements will take to complete. Additionally, next week will mark the end of what I consider the most exhausting part of my work which is sediment washing. Standing for hours in the lab using the spray nozzle to gently wash the mud and make sure the water runs clear is often a taxing process, and even though I don't love sitting at the microscope, I do find the work more exciting and less monotonous, possibly because going through samples becomes a game of 'I Spy.' I am grateful that for this chapter I am again able to stain the meiofauna samples with the Rose Bengal stain (the pink colorant you've seen in past photos), as the stain is extremely helpful in visualizing all the animals within the sample. Never again do I want to design a project where staining the individuals is not an option.

Tune in next week as we explore the first set of fauna samples from the final chapter of my dissertation!

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