Learning from Shells

Post by Scallop Research Intern, Bailey Moritz

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Toni Chute and I start the task of aging the first scallop of several boxes of scallop shells

Bustling with research vessels and ocean scientists, Woods Hole, MA is a fitting location for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, located right on the water. Toni Chute, one of their scientists specializing in all things scallops, was generous enough to give Cait and I a run-down on how to determine the growth of individual scallops based on their shells. Cait will be using these data as part of the collaborative scallop research project she is coordinating. Scallop shells are formed from calcium carbonate that the shellfish precipitates over the course of its lifetime. Depending on what region of the ocean it grew in, pigments vary, from a rich pink to deeper purple to the rusty red color seen on most scallops here in Maine. The shell-building material is laid down during a period of the year when conditions, such as temperature and food availability, are favorable. Then growth stops for awhile. This pattern creates rings, or visible line markings on the shells surface, that indicate each year of growth the scallop has undergone. By measuring the change in height between rings, you can elucidate how much the scallop grew from year to year. But be careful! As we learned, false “rings” can form if the shell cracked, or was damaged slipping through the large rings of scallop dragging nets when they were still below legal harvest size.

     Measuring a shell with each of the  
      growth rings marked off in pencil.

Determining growth rings can be a tricky task. The surface of some shells have a heavy cover of barnacles and limpets that make it difficult to see the patterns. Often times you can turn to slight changes in color to pin-point the rings, and getting the shell wet and holding it up to the light helps to bring that trait out. We practiced on a number of our shells collected from Muscle Ridge and were still somewhat hesitant in distinguishing between growth rings and cracks. But Toni reassured us that familiarizing ourselves with the shells patterns makes finding rings easier. It’s also perfectly alright to eliminate a shell from your sample if you’re finding it’s just too difficult to tell where the annual growth rings are. So, next time you come across a scallop shell on the beach or at the market, try your hand at finding the growth rings and you’ll be told a story about the creatures path from small spat to adulthood. 

Monitoring Phenology on Hurricane Island

Post by Chloe Tremper, Science Educator

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Newly broken leaves on the Horse chestnut. Taken May 15, 2015 

Since arriving on Hurricane earlier this month, I have been focusing on the phenology, or what I like to call the FUNology, of Hurricane Island.  Phenology is the study of the timing of events in the growth and life cycles of plants and animals.  When we monitor phenology, we are observing and recording the seasonal changes that occur in the natural world. In this day and age, when climate change is at the forefront of the scientific community, it is becoming more and more important to regularly record changes because overtime those data can unveil larger trends like flowers blooming a day earlier each year or birds arriving weeks earlier than they did in the past.  While it may not sound like the most exciting thing to do, monitoring the phenological changes happening around us opens up an entire new world of discovery and brings awareness to how climate change is impacting our own backyards.

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First blooms on the Horse chestnut, taken June 3, 2015

Last year, we established four phenology monitoring sites on the island.  One in the flywheel field, one near the Ice Pond, one at Gibbon’s Point, and one by the lab.  At each site we have designated plants that we go to regularly and record observations for.  The species we monitor include trees such as red spruce, balsam fir, apple, and quaking aspens; shrubs like red-berried elderberry, snowberry, lilac, and beach rose; and wildflowers including orange hawkweed, starflower, beach pea, and Canada mayflower.  Some of the key phenological changes we monitor in plants are when leaf buds break, when flowers bloom, when fruits are produced, and when leaves begin to fall off.

This year, we have made some tweaks to improve our phenology monitoring, and in order to have time to make more frequent observations at the other sites, I decided to eliminate the flywheel monitoring site.  In addition to adding a few new plants, we have also started monitoring the phenological changes of birds on the island.  As you probably know, many of the birds that call Hurricane home during the summer migrate south for the winter.  By going out every few days to each phenology site, identifying and counting birds heard or seen nearby, and recording behavioral observations we get a better idea of how bird populations fluctuate throughout the seasons – what species arrive when, when chicks begin to fledge, when species leave for the season, etc. 

By collecting the same data every year on the same individual plants and monitoring birds at the same spots, over time we will have a huge database of phenological information that we can use to monitor long term changes in the life cycles of plants and animals on Hurricane.

All of the phenology observations we collect are entered on Nature’s Notebook, an online database of phenological changes across the United States.   Data entered onto this website is also used by scientists around the globe for phenology research.  Nature's Notebook has a great app available for iPhones and Androids, as well as a website, where you can start your own phenology monitoring sites or trails.  So get out there and enjoy this beautiful world we live in while also collecting valuable data to help scientists!

Ahh-choo!

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new needle growth, and immature female seed cones on a white spruce bough

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Male pollen cones from a white spruce

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Immature female seed cones on a white spruce

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pollen sometimes blows out onto the ocean

While I was working in the lab on Hurricane this past week, I spied a beautiful little Northern Parula (Setophaga americana) foraging and darting in between the bough's of a nearby White Spruce (Picea glauca) tree. Every time the warbler emerged, it was followed by a cloud of yellow pollen. While many of the flowering plants (angiosperms) on Hurricane Island have yet to bloom, this is the season where conifers or evergreens (gymnosperms) are releasing pollen, and dusting everything in sight. 

Hurricane Island has three conifers that dominate the landscape: red spruce, white spruce, and balsam fir. At first glance, all of these evergreens might be hard to tell apart. I always remember the difference with the following mnemonic:  the "sharp, square, spruce" and the "flat, friendly, fir." Spruce tree needles are square and can be rolled across the palm of your hand, but fir needles have just two sides. Spruce needles are also shorter and tend to grow forward from the stem rather than perpendicular to the stem like balsam fir, which means that if you give a spruce tree a handshake it feels a lot more prickly or sharp. The other major difference between spruce and fir trees is that spruce cones grow up from the branches and fir cones grow down from the branches. 

But back to the pollen. For a very short period of time, the evergreens on Hurricane form a different cone in addition to the large, scaly, female seed cones that you are probably familiar with. Male pollen cones are much smaller (just about 1/2 inch long), and last for just a few days. Their purpose is to release pollen and fertilize the female seed cones before they fall off the tree. 

Along with releasing pollen, Hurricane's evergreens are also in the process of developing new needles which form on the tips of each branch and stay a lighter green color well into summer. After this flurry of activity in the spring, the conifers will not be changing much except for the newly fertilized female seed cones. These will continue to grow and develop for several years before releasing the seeds. 

One part of the research that we do on Hurricane is to monitor the phenology, or timing, of life cycle events in the plants and birds on the island. We use Nature's Notebook to record data on when events like new needle growth and the presence of pollen cones happen to the conifers on the island so that we can compare the timing of these events to other parts of Maine or the US. Other scientists can also create scientific models from these data to predict the impacts of climate change on the timing of when these events happen, which can also help us understand other things like changes in Maine's growing season.

Take a look around you at your home! Notice any new things blooming or growing? Have the conifers already released their pollen? 

Scallop Nerds Unite!

From April 23rd through April 28th, 2015, I attended and presented at the 20th International Pectinid Workshop in Galway, Ireland. Scientists from all over the world participated and session topics included ecology and general biology, aquaculture, fisheries, marine protected areas, biotoxins, resource management, and two sessions were dedicated to physiology, biochemistry, and genetics. A special session focused on Pectinids as witnesses of their environment in a changing ocean. This session featured work by French scientists to develop analysis tools which will use the shells of scallops to determine environmental characteristics at the time when the shell is formed. They have yet to determine the method for Placopecten magellanicus, the species found in Maine, but when they do, we hope to send them samples from the Muscle Ridge and Ocean Point closed areas.

Maine representatives L-R Skylar Bayer, Caitlin Cleaver, Trish Cheney, Carla Guenther, and Dana Morse

Maine was well represented at the conference, with four of us presenting our current research including Skylar Bayer, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, who presented on her dissertation work studying fertilization success in the Atlantic Sea Scallop (Placopecten magellanicus). Trisha Cheney, Resource coordinator for scallops, urchins, groundfish permit bank at Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) presented on state scallop management efforts, and Dr. Carla Guenther, Senior Scientist at Penobscot East Resource Center (PERC) and a member of the Scallop Advisory Council, followed up Trish's presentation by sharing the work that PERC and DMR have done to build trust within the scallop fishing community and to implement the rotational closed area management system currently in place in Zone 2. I provided preliminary results from quantifying the effect of the Muscle Ridge Closed Area on scallop populations. 

Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, Dr. Dave Bethoney, and Dr. Susan Inglis from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (You can find info about their work here) and Dr. Dvora Hart who works in the Population Dynamics Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, MA, presented on their work on the federal scallop fishery which ranged from a parasite in scallops that causes the white meat of the adductor to turn gray to larval dispersal.  

Conversations with workshop participants have inspired me to consider additional methods for the Collaborative Scallop Project that would improve the power of the study. In the near term, I am hoping to organize a visit to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center to learn their shell aging and growth rate methods so we can apply it to the shells we've collected over the past two years. 

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A full group photo from the conference (I am hiding in the back row at the left edge of the blue background)

Improving STEM teaching through course evaluation

Teachers with the Spring 2015 University Course Observation Program in front of Estabrooke Hall at the University of Maine, Orono.

For a three day span in February and another in April, 2015 I have been part of the fifth year of the University Classroom Observation Program (UCOP) at UMaine.  The program is an incredible way to bring middle/high school teachers together with STEM faculty on campus to promote change in individual educators and work towards overall institutional change.

Our group of teachers was trained to use the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduates in STEM (COPUS) to objectively document the nature of STEM instruction at UMaine.  The data obtained from this instrument since its development has significantly impacted student retention in STEM related majors on campus as a result of targeted professional development created to meet areas of faculty need. The nature of the protocol we use to document the classes is inherently non-threatening to the instructors that we 'evaluate' as we simply code their behavior and their students' behavior at 2 minute intervals. Were the students listening? Were they answering questions? Did the instructors write on the board or do a demonstration?  Did they answer questions or circulate through the room and help students? This kind of coding gives a reasonably detailed roadmap of what occurs in each class on a given day and can help instructors understand their current teaching style and allow them to evaluate whether there is anything they want to change.

What has been really interesting about the entire process is seeing the wide variety of teaching styles across STEM classes on campus and walking away with an inherent sense of what we as K-12 teachers would like to change about our own teaching practices.  We also get the benefit of being thrust into the role of 'student' again and recognizing the gaps that often exist between what students are being asked to do in college and what we are preparing them for in high school. Going into the program I expected to find a content gap between the two realms but I was surprised to find a far more substantial psychological gap that makes it hard for students to navigate the logistics of being a college level freshman.  Adolescents are gradually maturing throughout their tenure in our school systems but instead of gradually shifting responsibilities on the same scale, we largely maintain a safety net for students during their high school years and then college expects an incredible jump in their responsibility and accountability, effectively ripping the net out from under them.

This gap is in danger of widening in coming years because of the K-12 shift towards standards based education, particularly the practice of giving students multiple opportunities to meet a standard using different methods (a.k.a., "multiple pathways").  This is largely in contrast to the college environment where students have one shot to demonstrate they are meeting the requirements of the course and must retake the class if they do not deliver the first time around. This is not a judgement call saying one method is better than another, just an acknowledgement that there will likely be a harsher transition for students as they move into a post-secondary environment.  This was one of the major topics discussed by a panel of four UCOP teachers at a professional development opportunity for University faculty to hear about our experiences in their classrooms.  This culminating event was a great discussion which sparked valuable conversations and illustrated the need and desire for more of these opportunities in the near future.  Plans are being made for more such targeted discussions with faculty as well as opportunities for UCOP teachers to work with Maine Learning Assistants (MLA's) and students in the Masters of Science in Teaching (MST) program and I can't wait to see what comes from this program in years to come!

****UPDATE***** (March 7, 2016)

Click here to read the publication that came from this study! Congrats to Justin Lewin, Erin Vinson, MacKenzie Stetzer and Michelle Smith for publishing in CBE - Life Science Education.

Teachers with the Spring 2015 UCOP program after an April week of COPUS-ing!