Marine Science Seminars

Thursday, May 11, 10:00 am, In-person & Zoom.
UT Marine Science Institute, Patton Center, Auditorium.
(Faculty Candidate Seminar)

“Legacy and Emerging Contaminants in the North Sea”

Daniela Maria Pampanin, Ph.D.
Professor, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Chemistry, Bioscience and Environmental Engineering, University of Stavanger.

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Monday, February 27, 9:00 am, In-person & Zoom.
UT Marine Science Institute, Patton Center, Auditorium.
(Faculty Candidate Seminar)

"Copepod Carcasses: Occurrence, Fate and Ecological Significance"

Kam W. Tang, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Biosciences, Swansea University, U.K.

Seminar summary: Dr. Tang combines field observations, laboratory experiments and modelling to address a range of fundamental and applied research questions in plankton and microbial ecology. In this seminar, he will present examples of his work related to zooplankton carcasses. The presence of zooplankton carcasses is evidence of non-predatory mortality, but conventional field sampling often ignores the live-dead status of the animals, and consequently our understanding of zooplankton ecology may be in error. To tackle this problem, Dr. Tang began by developing a protocol to quantify zooplankton live-dead composition in field samples, investigating the temporal and spatial distributions of zooplankton carcasses, and improving mathematical models to estimate zooplankton mortality and production. He also studied the fate of the carcasses in connection to microbial activities, biogeochemical processes and carbon flux. Lastly, he used zooplankton live-dead data to investigate environmental changes.

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Thursday, February 23, 9:00 am, In-person & Zoom.
UT Marine Science Institute, Patton Center, Auditorium.
(Faculty Candidate Seminar)

"It's a Fluid Situation: Applying Novel Tools to Better Understand Feeding and Locomotion in Marine Environments"

Bradford J. Gemmell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, University of South Florida.
The Gemmell Lab.

Seminar summary: Compared to terrestrial species, marine organisms are immersed in a more dense, viscous fluid medium. This has implications for many processes essential to life in the ocean, such as feeding and locomotion. However, the ability to resolve and quantify small-scale interactions of free-swimming organisms and the water that surrounds them, has only recently been achievable. This is due to the transparent nature of the ‘signaling medium’ that controls many of these important interactions and the high relative speeds over which these interactions occur. In this seminar, Dr. Gemmell will explore some of the novel tools developed in his laboratory, and in collaboration with other scientists, that are used to elucidate the interactions of marine organisms and their surrounding fluid environment. He considers a wide range of spatial scales from protists to plankton, to vertebrates which spans both viscous and inertial fluid regimes and illustrate how many of the results are challenging some central and long-standing tenets in the realms of aquatic organism ecology and biomechanics.

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Monday, February 20, 9:00 am, In-person & Zoom.
UT Marine Science Institute, Patton Center, Auditorium.
(Faculty Candidate Seminar)

"Quantifying Zooplankton and Jellyfish and Their Impact on Food Webs"

Kelly Robinson, Ph.D.
Department of Biology, University of Louisiana, Lafayette

Seminar summary: Jellyfish and mesozooplankton are ubiquitous in marine ecosystems. They are sensitive to environmental change operating from the mesoscale to fine scale. Dr. Robinson’s research focuses broadly on how climate-related changes in jellyfish and mesozooplankton abundance, community structure, and spatio-temporal distribution affect trophic energy transfer in marine food webs. Jellyfish, in particular, are often only included tangentially (if at all) in ecosystem assessments and ecosystem-level food web modeling efforts. This is surprising given their voracious consumption of zooplankton, including fish eggs and larvae, as well as their role as food for a variety of fishes and marine turtles. Dr. Robinson will present results showing how the deep oceanic Gulf of Mexico responds to perturbations of key functional groups using a vertically- integrated end-to-end food web model. She will also show work on plankton patchiness at fine to sub-mesoscale for 32 taxa as well as research linking the Hurricane Harvey freshet to changes in zooplankton abundance and community structure along the shelf.

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Friday, January 27, 10:00 am, In-person & Zoom.
UT Marine Science Institute, Patton Center, Auditorium.
(Faculty Candidate Seminar)

"The Impact of Anthropocene Activities on the Ecotoxicology of Aquatic Systems?"

Daniel Schlenk, Ph.D.
Professor, Aquatic Ecotoxicology & Environmental Toxicology, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of California, Riverside.

Seminar summary: Anthropogenic activities associated primarily with the increasing use of fossil fuels as an energy source have led to significant changes impacting the aquatic environment. Our laboratory has been primarily focused on the impacts of oil and its constituents on the developmental biology of early life stage fish and the downstream effects of sea-level rise (hypersalinity) caused by climate change resulting from fossil fuel combustion. Oil-derived polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have also been shown to impact developmental stages of fish through multiple mechanisms of action. The global sequencing of microRNA (miRNA; miR) and its integration with downstream mRNA expression profiles in early life stage (ELS) fishes following exposure to crude oil determined consistently dysregulated miRNAs regardless of oil source or fish species. The overlay of differentially expressed miRNAs and mRNAs into in silico software determined that the key roles of these miRNAs were predicted to be involved in cardiovascular, neurological, and visually-mediated pathways. Through the use of micro-injection of targeted miRNAs and evaluation of predicted down-stream events in ELS models, additional insight of molecular initiating events of PAHs can be obtained to for Adverse Outcome Pathway assessments for mixtures of PAHs as well as non-chemical stressors derived from climate change. A similar approach has been used to assess Sea level rise in estuarine locations where agricultural activities occur may lead to co-exposures of aquatic organisms to high salinity and pesticides. Over the past 30 years, our laboratory has conducted studies showing that the impacts of salinity and pesticide co-exposures are species-specific with organisms having euryhaline life histories showing differential sensitivities to pesticides than those with stenohaline life histories. Many of the impacts have been associated with enhanced biotransformation to active metabolites that either target neurological targets (organophosphate/carbamate insecticides; chlorpyrifos/aldicarb) or endocrine targets (pyrethroids) causing potential reproductive or behavioral effects. Others have shown interactions with osmoregulatory targets through endocrine responses. This presentation will provide an overview of how adverse outcome pathway paradigms can be used combining effects from chemical and non-chemical stressors to identify key targets that can be used in weight of evidence components of ecological risk assessments.

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Monday, January 23, 10:00 am, In-person & Zoom.
UT Marine Science Institute, Patton Center, Auditorium.
(Faculty Candidate Seminar)

"Integrative Water Quality Challenges and Opportunities On an Urbanizing Planet"

Bryan W. Brooks, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor, Enviromental Science and Biomedical Studies, Director, Environmental Health Science Program, Baylor University.

Seminar summary: By 2050, 70% of human populations will reside in urban areas with a majority living along or immediately upstream from coastlines. Such high population densities elevate local demand for water, energy, food and other resources, including chemicals, for which usage is then concentrated in cities and within the diverse waste streams released from urban centers. Environment and health implications of global megatrends, including water quality intersections with demographic transitions to cities, present challenges and unique opportunities to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For example, empirical safety information is unavailable for the majority of the >350,000 chemicals and chemical mixtures listed for global commerce. Further, aquaculture will play an important role to meet future food demand, but 80% of the global sewage production is not treated before it is released to the environment and subjected to potential reuse. Judicious resource recovery will become increasingly critical; 66% of the world population will live in water stressed regions by 2025. Water reuse is routinely occurring in Texas, where base flows to bays and estuaries can be dominated by or dependent on reclaimed sewage, which includes diverse contaminants of historic and emerging concern. Herein, comparative pharmacology and toxicology is affording opportunities to identify susceptible organisms and systems to specific stressors when targets (e.g., receptors, enzymes) and molecular initiation events leading to adverse outcomes are evolutionarily conserved among species. These comparative approaches are also advancing an understanding of biologically active molecules produced by algae and cyanobacteria across the freshwater to marine continuum. Clearly, urban challenges along coastlines represent an emerging environment and health frontier, which requires multidisciplinary engagement and systems perspectives to define mechanisms, to develop interventions, and to implement sustainable management strategies that promote integrative water quality while reducing risks to biodiversity, ecosystem services and public health.

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