Studying Snail Eggs at BML
A Santa Rosa Junior College - Bodega Marine Laboratory Internship Program Story
I am Kamryn Conway, an SRJC student transferring to UCSD in Fall 2023, majoring in Human Biology. I am interested in systems biology and medicine. My mentor was Keira Monuki, a 4th-year PhD student.
The SRJC-BML internship was an eye-opening and rewarding experience. A hope I had before transferring was to learn about research and graduate school, two things I was interested in. BML became the perfect introduction to everything I was curious about. I learned that I want to pursue research, gained a realistic perspective of what that might look like, and had fun participating in fieldwork, field surveys, lab work, and more.
During the internship, I started a project involving Acanthinucella spirata, a marine snail, and its egg capsule aggregations. These aggregations are regularly yellow-cream colored but when exposed to environmental stressors, can turn pink, a sign of inviability. Salinity is a known environmental stressor for marine snail egg capsule aggregations, and for this project, we were curious if the temperature is an environmental stressor for A. spirata. This project adds knowledge to the topic of temperature changes and what that could mean for rocky intertidal species range shifts. To gather data, I measured the pink area on 126 egg capsule photos using ImageJ from May and June of 2022 and 2023. I made it a proportion of the total area and ran a statistical analysis. I found that the colder year, 2022, had significantly more pink egg capsules than 2023. I also found a correlation between temperature and the proportion of pink area: cold temperatures and an increase in pink area.
Completing this project under Keira’s guidance and being in the BML atmosphere taught me many skills, like improving attention and detail to introducing me to experimental design. I learned that it takes time, and one rarely comes up with perfect, novel ideas but leans on mentors and peers for collaboration. My overall experience at BML was incredible; everyone was kind, welcoming, and always happy to answer questions. I am grateful that this internship strengthened my passion for science and created a desire to pursue research in the future.
About the Program:
The SRJC-BML Internship Program provides summer research opportunities for Santa Rosa Junior College students at the Bodega Marine Laboratory.