27.08.2008 Individual projects, Day 1

Day Schedule:
07:00 – 08:00 Breakfast
08:00 – 11:30 Individual projects
11:30 – 14:00 Lunch
13:00 – 18:00 Individual projects
18:00 – 19:00 Dinner
19:00 – 03:00 Individual projects

Weather: Sunny in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon, no wind, 22°C
Tides: 12:37 – Low tide, 06:35 – High tide

Most of the students arrive very late for breakfast, because of the hard days they had ;-). The last ones arrived at 7:50 am. After the breakfast the individual projects started.
Group 1 catches about 210 soldier crabs and distributes them in 3 aquaria. One aquarium has all the time low tide; one aquarium has all the time high tide and the last aquarium changes the tides with the real tides. We are eagerly awaiting the results if the soldier crabs can sense the tides when outside of their natural environment as a signal for burrowing and re-appearance.
Group 2 aims at comparing the meiofauna from two different habitats (seagrass & mudflat) to investigate if the biodiversity is influenced by sediment type. They started their project by collecting samples in the field, in front of the research station. Five samples of the mudflat and five samples of the seagrass sediments were taken to allow for replication. The analysis of the meiofauna then proceeded with sieving out different size fractions and hard microscope analysis that lasts over many hours until late in the evening. Preliminary results indicate that the meiofauna biodiversity of the seagrass sediments is much higher than the one of the mudflats.
Group 3 asked the question whether strawberry cocle clams orientate themselves to optimize light uptake for the photosymbionts in their mantle, or whether they are randomly oriented. The group analyses the direction of the clams in the field and also has some samples in different light conditions in aquaria at the station. Preliminary results indicate an orientation of the clams to the west, but the statistical significance of this still needs to be tested. The low tide at 2 am (in the morning!) wasn’t far enough, so that no analyses could be done at night.
Group 4 analyses the behaviour of blue swimmer crabs over 24 hours to investigate habitat preferences. For this they have 10 crabs in 10 basins with a mudflat and a seagrass area and look every hour which habitat they prefer. This is a coninuation of a research project conducted by a resident PhD student.
The "event" of the day was at about 11 am when venomous fish attacked Christian. By chance it didn’t hit him really bad and he continued to work after he was at the medical centre. At night no consequences of the attack could be seen.
All groups continue their individual projects until Thursday, when they will present their project in the evening.