The Peterson Lab has been pretty busy this summer season, here is an update on all of the different projects that we have been working on!
Diana Chin continues to run experiments looking at a potential mutualism between eelgrass and Solemya velum (a clam with symbiotic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria in its gills). She would be really happy if she could figure out who their predators are in the field and if she could get them to spawn successfully in the lab. She has also been running the Long Island branch of the ZEN (Zostera Experimental Network) collaboration, which this summer included a large caging experiment, blue carbon sediment cores, and mesopredator surveys.
Rebecca Kulp has spent her summer hard at work understanding relationships between habitat complexity and predator-prey interactions using mud crabs and mussels. She focused on predator foraging efficiency by changing both the habitat structure density and level of competition.
Stephen Heck has been researching the effects of the presence of porgy on the consumptive rates of mud crabs on bay scallops as well as how the presence of the two predators influence the vertical distribution of bay scallops in the eelgrass canopy.
Amanda Tinoco has been working on some of the NPS projects in Great South Bay, helping runt he water quality and nekton monitoring programs. She also has been setting up a mesocosom experiment to study the effect of acoustic signals on predator consumptions, particularly examining how the sound of a predator (blue crab) eating it’s prey (mud crab) can affect the foraging behavior of mud crabs in different habitats.
Amber Stubler has been leading nekton survey dives on artificial off-shore reefs and keeping the lab healthy.
Brad Peterson has been working with all the students and making sure the Peterson lab is producing awesome research. He even prepared for his Hollywood career debut when the NPS came out to Great South Bay to check out what the lab does and interview the Peterson himself.
