But first, a bit of backtracking:
As an aspiring marine biologist, I want my research to be relevant to people. When I took classes at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston, Oregon, I was blessed with the most wonderful pair of landlords imaginable: a neighborly, down-to-earth, middle-aged husband and wife. The husband works as both a forest ranger and a home repairman and the wife works in the local hospital. My partner and I often had them over for dinner and in return they took us fishing and crabbing on their boat.
When I think about my own research, I always think of my former landlords in Charleston. I ask myself, why is my research relevant and meaningful to them, and to the other taxpayers who contribute to federally funded scientific research?
In my graduate program, I study jellyfish—a taxon that (fortunately) naturally attracts public interest. When I tell people I study jellyfish, they usually express enthusiasm, eager to learn more.
But in the IRES program, I have temporarily redirected my research efforts to a different group: the aforementioned bryozoans.
What is a bryozoan?
My father asked me this over coffee as I was preparing to leave the country. My dad is a keen observer of nature and a devoted reader of Science News. I realized that if he was unfamiliar with bryozoans, my landlords in Charleston almost certainly hadn’t heard of them either, and this, in my mind, presented a dilemma:
How can my research be meaningful if no one even has ever heard of the animal I’m studying?
Even among marine biologists, bryozoans—the so-called “moss animals”—are often disregarded. And rightfully so—the keys for identifying them are tedious and filled with words like “Avicularium,” “Ancestrula,” “Vibraculum” and “Zooecium.”
Bryozoans are their own phylum, Bryozoa, within the animal kingdom. Most form encrusting colonies composed of individual but connected animals called zooids. The zooids are microscopic and can be specialized for different functions, such as feeding, defense, or reproduction. Bryozoans are filter-feeders, and the typical body shape consists of a body wall surrounded by an exoskeleton, as well as a feeding apparatus called a lophophore--a circular crown of tentacles projecting out from the body of the organism. Under a microscope, the zooid body looks a bit like a daisy (the lophophore) growing out of a flower pot (the zooid body). The lophophore is retractable, and under a microscope feeding bryozoans become miniature ballerinas, a ballet of unending pliés.
I chose to research bryozoans for purely aesthetic reasons. The first bryozoan I saw under a microscope was Eurystomella bilabiata. At a distance, Eurystomella looks like a blotch of ruddy lichen smudged on the underside of a rock—amorphous like bread mold. Your eyes could skip right over it like the flattest stone across calm water. But under a microscope, Eurystomella looks like a hybrid between a ladybug, a pomegranate seed, and the delicate seeds of desiccated dandelions. It is not an exaggeration to say that seeing Eurystomella changed my perspective of the world. It made me wonder how many things I was seeing without ever seeing.
And it was from this entirely unscientific standpoint that I decided to study bryozoans in the IRES program this summer.
I’ve since learned that bryozoans, along with brachiopods, have the most extensive fossil record, dating back to the early Ordovician, and because of this are often used to study evolutionary history. Bryozoans are being studied for a potential Altzheimer's drug called Bryostatin. They have even inspired jewelry.
Bryozoans are also an “indicator phylum.” These inconspicuous invertebrates are some of the most sensitive of marine organisms, and because of this we can use them to infer the health of the larger ecosystem. In Lough Hyne, I am researching how bryozoans respond to the extreme oxygen conditions (“anoxia” and “hyperoxia”) created by ephemeral weeds. Ephemeral weeds, such as the green and brown algae species Ulva intestinalis and Stilophora rhizodes, have overtaken multiple areas of the Lough. The weeds form desolate veils in the water—the color of unripe olives. It looks like the setting for an undersea Addams Family. By studying bryozoans, we can begin to forecast how the Lough community is likely to respond to and change with the rise of weeds.
I speak for the bryozoans, for the zooids have no tongues. And I'm asking you sir, at the top of my lungs - that thing! That horrible thing that I see! How do the bryozoans respond to the weeds?
--Keats Conley