Hi all!

Sorry again for the lax in posts. I'm starting to wrap up my larval experiments, tomorrow is my last day at AIMS! I'm going to try to spell out some of my experiences here in the last week or so.

This is one of the main aquarium rooms. Tons of tanks set up for experiments. 

This is the other side of the aquarium room. Those big white containers are 500L larval culturing vessels, the smaller blue ones are 60L larval culture containers.  

I've set up one of my cultures in one of the smaller, 60L tanks.

My larval culturing vessel! There are larvae swimming about in there, but you can't see them in this photo.

But to make the larvae, don't forget the gametes and fertilization I had to facilitate!

My gametes from the big spawn night. A. millepora colonies from different populations have different colored eggs. The orange eggs are from corals closer to shore, the red eggs are from corals farther off shore. 

So what do I do after the larvae are swimming happily in their tanks? I do experiments on them. If you'll remember, I'm interested in why the larvae are different colors. Some larvae are green, some are red and some are in-between and we don't know why (will show pics soon!). All the experiments I'm doing are trying to answer what the differences are between these different colored larvae.

The first experiment is trying to find if the different colored larvae have differences in tolerance to thermal (heat) stress. What I did was take pictures of individual larvae (one at a time) and then place them in a heat bath (35.5 degrees Celsius) and a control bath (27.5 degrees Celsius). I'm monitoring these larvae every day to see which individuals die. Then using the photographs I will be able to identify the colors of the larvae that died early and the larvae that died late. This could tell me whether or not fluorescent color has anything to do with thermal tolerance.

My thermal tolerance experiment. The bin covered in foil is 35.5 degrees Celsius (red colored plumbing tubes) while the bath next to it is the control bath. 

In order to see the difference fluorescent colors of the larvae, I have to take fluorescent pictures of them! This is done using this microscope:

My room. Most of the time it's dark for taking fluorescent pictures. 

But there's a lot more going on that just taking pictures....

This is the larval culturing room of my collaborators. They crossed multiple individuals for a quantitative genetics experiment. Each container has larvae from one known mom and one known dad. They are looking for how traits are inherited (passed on through generations) and the trade-offs to having particular traits.

Here's a close-up of the smaller culturing containers. Water flows into the containers through the blue tube and slowly comes out of the 'banjo' or that white arm with the filter. This is so the larvae get exposed to clean water and don't get skunky. There is also gentle aeration, which is provided with a clear stick, or bubbler. This keeps the larvae moving around in there so they don't get stuck on the sides or on each other. 

I will leave you with one more picture... of a dangerous animal! Again, it's crown of thorns starfish:

Crown of thorns starfish eating a coral colony. They are practically immortal. To correct my previous post, it's not good to spear them since cutting them triggers them to spawn, creating more of the spiked beasts! They are extremely difficult to kill and can reach massive sizes. 

I have so much more to tell you about my experiments. Will post more soon. Last day of work tomorrow, wish me luck!