Olivia's corals
One of my greatest pleasures as a scientist and mentor is helping others succeed. For me, time spent advising young students pays dividends both in discoveries made and in personal growth of my lab members. My intern, Olivia, is a shining example of what a determined young scientist can achieve.
Olivia is a student at Bridgewater State University, just about an hour's drive from Woods Hole. She approached me about a year ago to inquire about internships, and I was able to bring her into my lab through WHOI's Guest Student program. She spent her summer analyzing an image dataset I had collected in Palau. By identifying the corals that live on shipwrecks, airplanes, and naturally-occurring coral reefs, we could tell how maritime heritage structures impact biodiversity in coral reef environments. The project was very successful, and we submitted a paper for publication based on Olivia's data. Both Olivia and I wanted to keep working together.
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| Olivia Quintin in the Fisher-Reid lab at Bridgewater State. Photo by Carly McMahon. |
In the fall, Olivia went back to Bridgewater with a precious package: coral tissue samples I had collected in Palau. You see, the Porites corals that I have studied since 2018 belong to four distinct genetic groups - we call them "lineages." Each lineage has a different level of heat tolerance, and some spawn at different times than others. Identifying which lineage a coral colony belongs to is very important - but also very expensive. Up until now, we've had to skim the entire genome of a coral to tell its lineage. I suspected there may be a cheaper way, but I don't quite have the molecular biology expertise to figure it out myself. Olivia had a brilliant idea.
Back at Bridgewater, Olivia works with Caitlin Fisher-Reid, a molecular biology expert. Normally, Caitlin works on salamanders, but the exact same molecular tools could be applied to corals. Olivia arranged a meeting between the two advisors, and we struck a deal. Caitlin's expertise plus my coral samples would make an ideal senior thesis for Olivia. The collaboration was mutually beneficial on all sides.
Now that we're into the winter semester, Olivia's work is beginning to yield results. I am extremely excited anytime she sends me a new tree showing the different DNA sequences between coral lineages. So far, it seems that one lineage is very different from the other three. Reliably identifying one lineage out of four using a technique that costs next to nothing is still a big win!
Olivia's journey has been chronicled by Bridgewater's press office. You can find the article here:
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