Last week in #MarineSymbiosis we talked about sea slug kleptoplasty. Turns out the (algal) chemical defense benefits are from potent bacterial kahalahide production! The students pushed themselves to understand the paper's bio- & chem-informatic methods.

#TWIMS 🖥️ 🧬 🧪 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

#TWIMS we covered #epibiosis & Decorator Crabs! During last year's iteration of the class, close to 50% of students chose to focus on this symbiosis so I added it this year. Also got to shoutout the #crabs in last night's #Survivor51 episode.

#MarineSymbiosis 🦀🧽🤿🧪

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#TWIMS was commensalism week! We read about remoras hitchiking sicklefin devil rays in the Azores! 99% of the surveyed rays had 1+ remora and the animal-borne video monitoring tracked their deep dives to ~500m!

#MarineSymbiosis 🌊📹🦈

www.int-res.com/journals/mep...

Now in 'real time!' #TWIMS (aka week 3), was parasitism week! We read about how polydora (worms) influence the physiology & behavior of (invasive) pacific oysters. The students had lots of questions about polydora ecology!

#MarineSymbiosis 🦪🪱🌊

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

For week 2, we (mentally) travelled to Palau! Students read about the ecology of a heat-tolerant coral symbiont (Durusdinium trenchii) 🌊🏝️🪸🇵🇼

#TWIMS #MarineSymbiosis

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Better late than never?

Been wanting to share my course's paper discussion reads in real time as a "this week in #MarineSymbiosis" thread aka #TWIMS

For wk 1, we learned that the dinoflagellates hosted by corals are distinct from epizoic waminoa (worms) 🌊🪸🪱

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As of today, the students in my #MarineSymbiosis course take over leading our Thursday paper discussions!

I get to resume my favorite hobby - picking random places to sit in the classroom, thereby throwing off everyone’s habit of sitting in the same seat. 😈