Sea Star Larvae Research

Earlier this month Professor Isidro Bosch from SUNY Geneseo in New York and KML staff took a trip out to the Gulf Stream between Alligator Reef and Tennessee Reef to collect and isolate sea star larvae using plankton trawls.

The trip was a great success and they were able to isolate over thirty larvae which will make for work that will last over the next month or two.

These larvae are very important to Bosch's research, and normally very difficult to collect. In the past they have been collected from the Sargasso Sea or from the Gulf Stream off Ft. Pierce, well north of the Florida Keys. This is the first time they've been collected this far south, so learning a bit more about their geographic distribution was an added bonus to the large number of specimens collected.

The larvae are of considerable scientific interest to the professor for two reasons...

First, they are able to clone themselves, which is a very unusual strategy among larvae of non-parasitic animals. The cloning process involves many interesting developmental changes in tissues and cell lines, including the action of a group of cells that are akin to stem cells found in many other animals.

Second, the larvae seem to benefit from what might be a mutualistic association with large numbers of bacteria that live under the larval cuticle.

Bosch's immediate goal is to identify the type of bacteria living with the larvae and characterize its physiology. Ultimately the goal is to better understand what if anything the larvae get from the association and whether the bacteria are needed in order for the larvae to clone themselves.

Since the trip Bosch has been able to establish bacterial cultures from the samples collected. The next steps are to extract, amplify, and eventually sequence DNA from the bacteria to help determine what group of microbes they belong to. He has also preserved larvae for genetic work and for studies of clonal development.

For any further details or questions contact Professor Bosch at (bosch@geneseo.edu).

The role of predation on survivorship of coral recruits

Mike Evans, Masters candidate at SUNY Buffalo with Dr. Howard Lasker, has been at KML since early May. He is studying the role of predation on coral recruit survivorship of the gorgonian coral, Briarium asbestinum, and the scleractinian coral, Porites asteroides.

While grazing rarely results in mortality of adult coral, predation on single polyp recruits would presumably kill those individuals, with the potential to impact the abundance of adult colonies.

To assess the effect of predation on recruit survivorship, newly-settled polyps of each species were placed at East Turtle Shoals in one of 5 treatments that excluded different combinations of known coral predators.Hardware cloth cages which totally or partially enclosed settled recruits

Exposed polyps settled on branches (B. asbestinum) or plexi-plates (P. asteroides), floating above or attached directly to cinderblocks

Recruits were counted 3 times per week over a four week period to determine differences in survivorship between treatments and to assess the roles of various predators on coral recruit mortality.

In search of secondary metabolites with pharmaceutical value

A team of University of Florida researchers from the College of Pharmacy, led by Dr. Hendrik Luesch, assistant professor, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, recently stayed at KML. Using the Lab as their base of operations, the team collected cyanobacteria and algae from reefs in the Middle Keys, with the assistance of KML staff.

Once back at UF, the team will test the collected samples for production of secondary metabolites with pharmaceutical value.