Today was my first day of helping out in the lab. I worked with Maggie Amsler to get ready for a bioassay using the amphipod species called Gondogenia antarctica.
Maggie Amsler preparing the substrate.
First we had to create a substrate that the amphipods would eat. This consisted of heating up a mixture of Alginate and mixing it with 750 mg of dried Cladophora, this created our control group. Our experimental group followed the same process, but we added 1.2 mg of a purified compound which consists of an extract from Plocamium cartilagineum. We then poured CaCl2 over the mixture to set it so it solidified into a gel like consistency. We had to let this cool down so we put it in the refrigerator, and off to the aquarium lab we went. Note to self here, remember to bring gloves to the aquarium lab – brrrrrrrrrrr. In the aquarium lab we needed to catch those very quick amphipods five at a time and transfer them into containers until we had 20 amphipods in each container.
20 captured Amphipods.
We will have 10 experimental containers and 10 control containers, the control containers will not have any amphipods in them, but they will contain disks of the mixture from the first part. These disks will take in water, changing their mass and this will allow us to determine just how much of the experimental disks were eaten by the amphipods
Todays question comes from Edly G: "Does Antarctica have any harbors or ports?"
Edly G's question card.
Yes, it does. Every station on the coast (both U.S. and International) has a port. The one here at Palmer Station is on Hero Inlet.
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