Ward Lab - UConn Marine Sciences

07/08/2020

Hot off the press... Big congrats to Julia, Tyler, and Evan on their new publication! Have a look to learn about big differences between f***l and gut microbiomes of blue mussels.

Bivalves have ecological and economic importance but information regarding their associated microbiomes is lacking. As suspension feeders, bivalves capture and ingest a myriad of particles, and their digestive organs have a high throughput of particle-associated microbiota. To better understand the....

09/30/2019

Evan presented at the Groton Plastic Reduction Public Forum on September 26th. It was exciting to see so many people working to educate themselves on the plastics issues we are facing today. Thank you to the Groton Conservation Commission for getting us involved!

09/27/2019

What's Tyler been up to recently? Glad you asked! He's been conducting a three week condition index experiment with juvenile mussels to investigate if they like phytoplankton poached or raw. In his microbiome studies, it is ideal to use boiled phytoplankton to control external bacterial introduction. But, no one has ever looked into the quality of boiled phytoplankton for bivalves.

08/19/2019

We are happy to celebrate a big birthday with one of our post-docs, Dr. Lisa Nigro, over some pasta and cannolis! Despite the pouting, she's aging beautifully. Lisa works on oyster gut microbiome in our lab and is currently investigating the differences in the microbiomes of oysters over a latitudinal gradient. She also helps to mentor our graduate and undergraduate students for both microplastic and microbiome work.

07/29/2019

Check out our most recent paper on bivalve selective feeding of microplastics

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.9b02073

07/22/2019

Does ingesting microplastics have any effect on the mussel gut microbiome? That's what Hannah is trying to find out with her big experiment this summer! She's dosing blue mussels with nylon microplastic fibers for three weeks and will be assessing the gut microbial community via high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Hannah has been working super hard, and we're looking forward to seeing the data!

07/18/2019

Meet Larissa Tabb! She’s one of our undergrads in the lab. She’s actively studying capture efficiency in mussels and tunicates. She is working with Martina to determine if pseudofeces production in bivalves is a result of intrinsic factors, extrinsic factors or a combination of the two.

07/16/2019

We are thrilled to introduce our new postdoc: Martina Capriotti! Martina was born in San Benedetto del Tronto, along the italian Adriatic coast. She holds a Master's degree from Polytechnic University of Marche Region (Ancona, Italy) where she got the ERASMUS grant, which is a wonderfull opportunity for students to have an academic experience abroad, inside Europe. She choose to go to Trondheim, in Norway, to study the ecotoxicological effects of endocrine disruptors on the juveniles of Atlantic salmon. Martina became really passionate about marine pollution, so she applied for a PhD program at University of Camerino (Italy), where she conducted research on coastal biomonitoring and on the effects of xenoestrogens on the expression of selected biomarkers in mussels, fish and sea turtles! During this period she also had the opportunity to work at the Sea Turtle Rescue Facilities of University of Camerino. After her PhD, Martina participated in a project studying microplastic and chemical pollution for the National Geographic Society. She obtained a grant, becoming a National Geographic Explorer, and she was named an Ocean Rescue Scholar by the european media company SKY.

Here in the Ward lab, Martina is studying the feeding physiology of suspension feeders, thanks to a recently funded NSF grant. Stay tuned for updates on her awesome research!

07/12/2019

This summer we're hosting a fantastic REU student: Julia Baer! Julia is a rising junior from Mount St. Mary's University whose interests include invertebrates and biochemistry. She is working with Tyler on two separate experiments that both involve perfecting our laboratory's ability to study the bivalve gut microbiome. Her first experiment is a direct comparison between the gut and f***l microbiomes from blue mussels and the second experiment involves assessing the quality of sterilized phytoplankton as a food source for blue mussels. In addition to being a bright and capable experimental biologist, Julia is a joy to work with and we are excited to see her experimental results!

01/31/2019

The Ward lab is hiring!

The Job: Post doc

Project:The proposed research will determine if feeding processes are mediated by intrinsic or extrinsic factors, and address fundamental questions regarding control of particle capture elicited by invertebrate suspension-feeders when confronted with different particle spectra and, thus, changing food
supplies.

Interested parties should apply through www.jobs.uconn.edu by February 15th, 2019
Job ID: 2019300