🌊 Phylum Friday: Echinodermata - Urchins!! 🌊 While they may look scary, sea urchins are slow-moving herbivores that eat kelp and other algae. Urchins typically hide from light using their tube feet to hold on to shells, algae and detritus for shade and extra protection from predators!

Very excited to be featured in this article all about the URI dive program and to share a little bit about my PhD research with our diving community! www.uri.edu/magazine/iss...

🌊 Phylum Friday - Urochordata 🌊 Tunicates come in colonial (many individuals living in a colony) & solitary forms and are filter feeders, pumping water through their two siphons to collect food. Fascinatingly, tunicates are closely related to vertebrates because they have a nerve cord as larvae.

🌊 Phylum Friday - Arthropoda! 🌊 This week’s pinchy pals are among the most diverse and most abundant group of organisms in the world! There are upwards of 70,000 species of crustaceans ranging from microscopic copepods to deep sea crabs to tropical shrimps to intertidal barnacles!

🌊 Phylum Friday: Bryozoa! 🌊 These small colonial organisms are usually found encrusting rocks or blending in with algae. However, many of the species found in New England are invasive, and have become a concern for intertidal and subtidal ecosystems as they encrust and out-compete native species.

Fascinating dive in a kelp forest to urchin barren transition zone yesterday in Monterey! 🌊🤿

JUMBO announcement: This week I started my Postdoc at Tufts University in the Rotjan Lab! Our research will explore the energetic trade-offs of facultative symbiosis in temperate corals up and down the Atlantic coast!

We found some awesome critters this week on our research cruise in the Gulf of Mexico!

We had an amazing time in Crete with amazing people, incredible food, and challenging yet rewarding science!

PhD ✅

Less than one week until I defend my PhD! If you’d like to learn about coral biology, isotopes or temperate ecosystems please join us on zoom!

Yesterday we marched. Today we get back in the lab to do what we love #marchforscience

It’s ICRS Awards time! Are you a post graduate student or early career scientist looking to support your research? Check out our Graduate Fellowships and Ruth Gates Fellowships. Deadline March 15. Details on these Fellowships and more exciting awards at: coralreefs.org/awards-and-h...

Do #kelp forests really matter for fish? Check out our new meta-analysis w/ Ale Pérez-Matus in Ecology showing 1) multistipe kelps do more than single stipe, 2) all kelps enhance juveniles, 3) kelps help small herbivores & big predators. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

I’m excited to share the first of my PhD publications! We aimed to fill a critical knowledge gap on the ecology of the temperate coral #Astrangia by quantifying its distribution along a depth gradient. We found that light & algae control abundance & ecotype in Rhode Island. doi.org/10.1111/maec...

#snailsaturday anyone?

So. Many. Baby. Corals! #astrangia

A reminder to US scientists: yes, your research is at risk. It's terrifying. But these efforts are systematically targeting programs meant to broaden access to science. This is the time to check in with BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled, and international students and colleagues in your departments.

Looking for even more coral research and conservation content? Check out some of my incredible friends that have just joined Bluesky: @jillashey.bsky.social @coralonthemind.bsky.social @catherineraker.bsky.social

Officially dry suit certified & getting ready for some winter #scuba! #diving #drysuit #AAUS

Celebrating our wonderful undergraduate researcher Sofia Piccone today at the #URI undergraduate research conference! Sofia has been working with me to create conservation baselines for #octocoral physiology, morphology, and trophic ecology along depth gradients!

After 9 semesters, 5 different courses & 324 students, I just wrapped up my last day of teaching in grad school! Feeling grateful for all my fellow TAs & for the opportunity to teach field courses & be an instructor of record at URI. Here’s one thing I learned from each course:

How does environmental variability affect coral calcification? 🪸🪸🪸 Check out our new paper:

A list of #marinebiology starter packs! 🌊 go.bsky.app/4PTX62K Marine Ecology go.bsky.app/RS5zQHv Marine Biologists I go.bsky.app/8DoyTMs Marine Biologists II go.bsky.app/Qo5Gh2H Coral reef science go.bsky.app/E8vrnd6 LGBTQIA+ Grads go.bsky.app/7MdiLgo Ocean Women go.bsky.app/4wMsfX4 Ocean Women II

#LGBTQInSTEM day isn’t over yet! Here’s a starter pack of LGBTQIA+ graduate students (PhD & MS) in marine science! 🌊🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️✨ It’s so important to build microcommunities! They can provide support from others at the same career stage who hold similar identities. Comment if you’d like to be added! 🧪🧬

Dorid nudibranch fondly named “dippin dots” • Appledore Island, Maine, August 2024

Super excited to wrap up 3 months of diving to maintain my #astrangia project today! Now it’s time to swap my wetsuit for a lab coat!

Excited to share my work on coral energetics, photoacclimation, morphological plasticity and everyone’s favorite facultative mutualist: #Astrangia poculata (pictured below) on this app!