Meyer-Kaiser lab

Sarah's work station at WHOI, where she has sorted thousands of animals so far. Here, she's neck-deep in local polychaetes.  My technician, Sarah, is amazing . I lean on her heavily. Sarah can handle herself with very little direction when I assign her a project. She's highly detail-oriented, so I know she won't miss a single thing. Most of the time, I hand her a set of samples and walk away - she's got it. And I can trust that she will reach out when she needs help.  This week, Sarah asked for help with some samples. She has been cranking away, sorting and identifying animals from Vineyard Sound  for a project we're doing with a local consulting company . We touch base regularly to identify any tricky species together. But the tricky ones have piled up. Sarah was feeling behind. She asked for two focused days on the microscope with me, so I kept my schedule as clear as possible and joined her in the lab.  One of the bivalves in our samples Sarah came to our me...

Friends, today another paper from my Palau coral project is out! The postdoc on the project, Cas, led an analysis of how different corals respond to high temperatures. You probably remember that we found 3 cryptic lineages of Porites corals at our study sites. Cas wanted to find out how those lineages differ and how each one handles the environmental conditions they live in. As it turns out, each lineage has a different strategy - and it's not just the corals themselves. The algal symbionts and microbial communities that live inside them contribute to thermal tolerance, too. It's a long, detailed paper. You can read our work here in Global Change Biology :  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gcb.17578

I have big plans for Hollis . And he has big plans for himself. One of the first things he told me when we first met is that he is college-bound. No questions. No second thoughts. He is going to college. Alright, dude, let's get you into college.  We spent all last year sorting larvae from Arctic zooplankton samples. There are still more samples to go through, but I didn't want Hollis to spend a second year sitting at a microscope - he already knows how to sort larvae. It's time to expand his range of skills. When we started mentorship this year, I told Hollis about some of the lab techniques I wanted to introduce him to. I had barely finished saying the words "DNA extraction" before he squealed in delight.  The scallop project we're working on right now provides an excellent opportunity to introduce Hollis to molecular biology techniques. We've separated all the bivalve larvae from the samples, but we have to verify that the larvae we're looking at...

For a while now, I have mentored an intern named Hollis . He was matched with me through a mentorship program at his school and stayed on as a volunteer over the summer. We're now in the second year of mentorship, and Hollis and I are already scheming about ways to keep working together long-term. He's still in high school, but he's already becoming a full-fledged member of the team.  Hollis spent most of last year helping to sort larvae from the high Arctic, but this year, I wanted to introduce him to new techniques. We're working together on an analysis of scallop larvae from Georges Bank. The task sounds simple: count how many scallop larvae are in my samples from each station. But that is easier said than done.  The samples are thick . Scallop larvae are tiny, so I had to use a super fine mesh net to collect them. So fine, in fact, that the net didn't just catch the larvae - it caught all the diatoms that were in the water, too. We're basically hunting fo...

Holding onto the rail with one elbow, I fished through my backpack with my other hand. It had to be in there somewhere. My fingertips registered the plastic texture, and my hand wrapped around the rectangular shape. There it was: my card for the Washington DC Metro. Just in time. I smiled. That little plastic card with $3 left on it has lived in my backpack since 2019 . It's about time I used it again.  I stepped off of the airport tram and scanned the overhead signs for my train.  My Marine Debris project is one of many funded recently by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That means I am now part of a national community of concerned investigators trying to remove trash from our oceans. NOAA SeaGrant, the federal agency that funded my proposal, has organized a series of meetings to connect us with each other. Once per year, I will travel to NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, MD to update the community about my team's work.  This was my first marine debris symposium, an...

Some images from Calvin's seminar, including sites he has studied. In his own words, "I study failures." Friends, as many of you know, I collaborate closely with a maritime archaeologist, Dr. Calvin Mires . The marine debris project that we just got funded will support Calvin for 3 years, and we both see that time as an opportunity. Over the next 3 years, Calvin will hopefully become much more integrated in WHOI research and develop new collaborations and projects. Calvin's been a WHOI employee since 2019, but since he's worked part-time and primarily remotely, not many people have met him in-person. The marine debris project will change all that.  The first step in introducing Calvin to the broader WHOI community was to schedule a seminar. The Biology department weekly seminar series is a platform for scientists in the department to discuss their research, answer questions, and build relationships. I just so happen to be one of the co-coordinators for the semina...

Sabine was my intern in 2017. She had just finished high school. I was about a year into my postdoc. A few times a week, we sat next to each other at the lab bench. She sorted larvae; I worked on whatever needed doing. She asked questions; I answered them. The data she generated were included in a paper I published a few years later.  We've sporadically kept in touch ever since, mostly through email and Christmas cards. When Sabine sent me a message that she was going to be in Woods Hole, it was a welcome surprise.  Dropping Sabine off at R/V Atlantic Explorer - the calm  before the crazy busy expedition! She's a PhD student now. This bit of news was exciting for me to find out - not only has Sabine stayed in marine science, she's pursuing research at the highest level of academia. I'm delighted to think that her chosen career will bring Sabine across my path repeatedly over the next few years.  We met at my house for dinner, and it was so good to catch up with Sabi...

Kharis with her opening slide I once signed an email to my lab as "Your Cheerleader in Chief." Let's be honest: that is one of the ways I view myself. A big part of my job is mentoring, and to me, mentoring sometimes means cheering from the sidelines when my lab members succeed. I am with them in the struggles, and I am with them in the victories. I love the days when I get to be a cheerleader.  Recently, I got to cheer on my PhD student, Kharis. She is currently about a year out from the end of her PhD program, and that meant she was due to give a seminar. PhD students in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program present part of their dissertation research in their final year, mostly as a means to gain experience discussing their research in a public context. The seminar also reduces the amount of material they'll have to cover during their hour-long defense and lets the department know what the student has been up to.  I know I'm biased, but Kharis rocked it. I was very proud ...

"White blob" in all its blob-ish glory It's always a good day when data land in my inbox. Recently, I have been working to identify larvae and juvenile invertebrates that I collected on R/V Polarstern earlier this year. Some of you might remember that I used a fine mesh net on an epibenthic sledge to collect larvae in the Arctic deep sea. I also had the opportunity to collect larval traps I had left on the seafloor 5 years earlier. Needless to say, identifying larvae from the Arctic deep sea is a challenge. DNA sequencing is absolutely necessary for identifications. So when the sequences show up in my email, I get excited.  My lab has refined a great protocol for DNA extraction and amplification for single larvae. It's working reliably now, even for some challenging specimens . This week, I was delighted to get successful sequences from my Polarstern samples.  There were some surprises, to be sure. The biggest surprise was from a specimen I had named "white ...

Friends, I have good news! Team Porites has published our research on spawning, larval development, and settlement of massive Porites corals in Palau.  In 2022 and 2023, I led a field team studying reproduction in Porites corals  - when they spawn, how big their eggs are, how the larvae develop, when and where they settle. This work involved a lot of late nights , a lot of patience , and a lot of diligent note-taking . Our study was largely observational, but it's still incredibly valuable information for anyone working on mounding Porites .  You can read the full paper in Invertebrate Biology :  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ivb.12447

It is autumn in New England. Hurricanes sweep through the North Atlantic. The wind speed along the beach is swifter than ever. The surface of the ocean is disrupted by white-capped waves. The weather is anything but pleasant.  F/V Kristen S. in port in New Bedford So if a scientist needed samples from, say, Georges Bank, they would be completely dependent on the weather forecast. When a window of calm seas opened up, they might even drop everything and dash to New Bedford to hop on a fishing boat. That, my friends, is exactly what I did.  You might remember I have a project right now on Atlantic sea scallops, Placopecten magellanicus . I went out on a fishing boat over the summer to collect data on scallop density, water temperature, food supply, and predator abundance at stations on Georges Bank. Out of all the parameters we measured (and tasty scallops we were allowed to keep), there was one piece missing: scallop larvae. You see, scallops spawn in the fall. If I was goin...

The jaws of this polychaete now  fill Sarah's nightmares. Photo by  Sarah Zuidema. Back when I was in grad school, I spent 2 weeks on a ship in the Arctic. It was part of a class I was taking on polar benthic ecology. The expedition gave me a great opportunity to collect panels that I had deployed about a year prior and actually generated data that turned into one of my dissertation chapters . Aside from my personal research, though, the class itself was incredibly valuable. Most of the time at sea was spent collecting and sorting  seafloor samples from different Svalbard fjords. Sorting seafloor samples means identifying lots of worms. So basically, I spent 2 weeks at sea identifying worms.  Boy am I glad that I did.  There are an unbelievable number of worms in the ocean. According to the World Register of Marine Species, there are 12,834 valid species of polychaetes globally. (There's even a species of  polychaete named after me .) And polychaetes are ...