Milestone passed!

Friends, we had an exciting day in the lab this week. After 3 months of solid work, sorting animals day in and day out, and countless hours sitting at a microscope, Sarah finished a dataset! 

Sarah and I tracked her progress on the white 
board, and we were both clearly excited to 
update it when all sorting was finished! Photo
by Johanna Weston. 

You might remember that my lab is collaborating on a study with the Palau International Coral Reef Center. Our goal is characterize the biodiversity of zooplankton in Palau National Marine Sanctuary. PICRC staff collected net tow samples in 2022, I brought them to WHOI last spring, and poor Sarah has been analyzing them ever since. 

There are so many species. Seriously. So. Many. Species. It's kind of funny that there's another zooplankton project happening in the lab at the same time - Kharis is working on a set of samples from the high Arctic. It feels a bit like we've undertaken a case study in latitudinal clines in biodiversity, because the Palau samples and the Arctic samples are a world apart. So far, Kharis has uncovered a handful of species in her Arctic samples - a barnacle larva, some worm larvae, one very common species of clam. Meanwhile, Sarah has sat at the microscope right next to Kharis, drowning in species. We had dozens of snails, 7 different types of clam larvae, and at least 10 larval sea stars. It's honestly been insane. Altogether, Sarah sorted over 500 species from the Palau samples. 

Finishing the sorting was a huge milestone. The project is far from over - after all, we have to identify all of those species - but we're enjoying the sweet taste of victory for now.