Lots of people dream of becoming a marine biologist, but I actually got to do it!  I completed my PhD in Biology at UW in 2019 with Ken Sebens as my advisor and Megan Dethier on my committee.  I was lucky to spend a good chunk of my research on San Juan Island and be part of the FHL community.  I’m currently a Data Science Fellow in Seattle, sitting in my chair and scheming a trip back to the island.

The only thing constant in life is change. Humans have thought about this for millennia, but what of the other eukaryotes? Surely the Sceloporus lizards – who experience the extreme diel temperature cycles of desert living – have their version of Heraclitus, who asserted that “everything flows.” And the rockweed Fucus – which dry to a crisp during low tide but somehow rejuvenate again at high tide – must have their own Octavia Butler, who built a religion in Parable of the Sower around the idea that “the only lasting truth is Change.” Change is constant in natural environments. As global change continues its march, even organisms living in textbook examples of stable environments cannot duck out of the way. The summit of Mt. Everest has a garbage problem. The bellies of deep sea amphipods are full of plastic fibers. One of the major signatures of that global change is climate warming. While a statement like “global warming is bad” is probably true in a general sense, it’s not scientifically rigorous enough. Research indicates that the effects of warming on biological systems are often intricate and surprising. 

Ecologists are tasked with understanding these details, which are non-trivial – if population models are to make trustworthy and useful predictions, they likely need to account for the intricacies and surprises of warming. It’s a large and complicated problem.  Ken Sebens and I tackled a small piece of it while at Friday Harbor Labs.  Photo: barnacles of various sizes (Balanus glandula, Semibalanus cariosus and Chthamalus dalli), a dogwhelk snail (Nucella ostrina) and small rockweed (Fucus) specimen in the center.

For intertidal organisms, life occurs in two domains. Consider an acorn barnacle living on an exposed rock face in the mid-intertidal zone. Maybe it’s June on San Juan Island, and the afternoon low tides coincide with warm summer temperatures. When the tide is out, the barnacle bakes in hot sun.  When the tide is in, the barnacle bathes in cool water. Temperatures in both air and water must be considered in order to understand its biology.

The ecology here is intricate, and the study was not easy to pull off; the experiment took me three attempts! I had help from a host of people at FHL. Here I'll give a shout-out especially to the FHL Maintenance crew for going above and beyond. I also acknowledge funding from FHL fellowships (including the   Richard and Megumi Strathmann Endowed Fellowship  and   Patricia L. Dudley Endowment) on this project, and others throughout my PhD. The challenge is on, to understand ecological responses to global change. Our study adds weight to the importance of investigating how the ecological surprises of climate warming propagate up to the levels of population and ecosystem dynamics. Ecologists increasingly conduct research on the effects of changing environments, perhaps increasingly in sync with the aphorism that barnacles have long held to be true: “life is flux."   Photo: Z-spar epoxy is a tool commonly used in marine research.  Barnacles often prefer to settle in crevices, as shown with the letters here.

References:

Butler O.E. 1993. Parable of the Sower. New York, NY: Warner Books.

King W. and K.P. Sebens. 2018. Non-additive effects of air and water warming on an intertidal predator-prey interaction. Mar Bio 165:64.

Yamane L. and S. Gilman. 2009. Opposite responses by an intertidal predator to increasing aquatic and aerial temperatures. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 393:27-36.