Great crowds attended the second annual SUBMERGE festival at Hudson River Park’s Pier 26.  The event was hosted by Hudson River Park and the New York Hall of Science and SoMAS was there to participate!  Over 6000 people were in attendance!

David Bowman, Jason Schweitzer and Mike Fogg were onboard the R/V Seawolf to give vessel tours of the work deck, galley, and wheelhouse.  Younger sailors even had an opportunity to steer the (docked) ship!  Tom Wilson and Chris Crosby from the Instrument Lab were in the ship’s laboratories.  Guests experimented with black magnetic sand, smelled sulfur and observed fool’s gold in a “black smoker” hydrothermal vent, held a foam cup crushed to miniature size by being immersed a mile deep in the ocean, and were invited to “please touch and handle” other scientific equipment and deep ocean samples.

Dr. Nils Volkenborn and students Molly Graffam, Ian Dwyer and Sam Gurr had two tables showing off the work in their lab.  One table demonstrated the lives of animals beneath the seafloor, in particular how those animals move water and sediment around, physically and chemically modifying the environment.  As Ian Dwyer explained, “antfarm aquaria were used to observe the animals visually and porewater pressure sensors detect the changes in water pressure that occur when the animals move, dig, feed, defecate, or pump water through their burrows.”

The second table demonstrated ecophysiology:  the study of how animals and their physical functions respond to the environment.  Sam Gurr indicated that heart rate is used to measure “how commercially and ecologically important shellfish (such as the bay scallop and eastern oyster) respond to hypoxia, which has proven to cause lethal and sub-lethal effects to many marine animals.”  The display showed off a novel approach that uses minimally invasive infrared sensors, glued to the shell, that are used both in the laboratory and in the animal’s natural habitat to record responses to natural stressors in the environment.

Dr. Mary Scranton and Dr. Tara Rider were also there to meet with graduate and undergraduate alumni that attended the event and were happy to see SoMAS!

Pictures below by Tom Wilson, Helen Wilson, Chris Crosby and Nils Volkenborn.  Content provided by Mary Scranton, Ian Dwyer, Sam Gurr, Tom Wilson and Mark Lang

From “North Atlantic Tuna Less Toxic, Study Finds” on SBU Happenings, 2016-12-07

In a piece of welcome news for seafood lovers, a Stony Brook-led research team has found declining levels of mercury in bluefin tuna caught in the North Atlantic over the past decade. Mercury is a neurotoxin harmful to humans, and tuna provide more mercury to humans than any other source.

A study led by Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) and published in Environmental Science & Technology provides a new data set, the largest of its kind, of mercury concentrations in Atlantic bluefin tuna. The data demonstrate that, while tissue concentrations were higher than in most other fish species, there has been a consistent decline in mercury concentrations in these tuna over time, regardless of age of the fish.

The rate of decline parallels the declines – over the same time period — of mercury emissions, mercury levels in North Atlantic air, and mercury concentrations in North Atlantic seawater. Authors of the study include Stony Brook’s Cheng-Shiuan Lee, a Ph.D student in chemical/biological oceanography, SoMAS Professor Robert Cerrato and Nicholas S. Fisher, Distinguished Professor & Director, Consortium for Inter-Disciplinary Environmental Research at SoMAS.

According Fisher, the finding appears to indicate that changes in mercury levels in fish tissue respond in real time to changes in mercury loadings into the ocean. The study suggests that mercury levels may be improving as a result of declining coal use, reducing emissions that drift over the Atlantic.

The researchers measured mercury concentrations from the tissue of 1,292 bluefin tuna caught between 2004 and 2012. Some of the key findings:

• Over the eight-year period, mercury levels in the fish fell 19 percent.
• Mercury concentrations were generally high, and were highest in the largest, oldest fish; no differences were noted between males and females.
• Mercury in the air over the North Atlantic fell 20 percent from 2001 to 2009.
• Global levels of mercury emissions have fallen 2.8 percent a year from 1990 to 2007.

The study was supported in part by a grant from the Gelfond Fund for Mercury Research & Outreach.

This article is also featured on the following links:

• http://wnpr.org/post/mercury-levels-gulf-maine-tuna-decline
• http://mainepublic.org/post/mercury-levels-gulf-maine-tuna-decline#stream/0
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/29/burning-less-coal-isnt-just-making-air-cleaner-its-making-your-tuna-safer/?utm_term=.57d65a03a5cb
• http://www.pressherald.com/2016/12/07/our-view-pollution-curbs-on-coal-fired-plants-have-made-gulf-of-maine-tuna-safer/
• http://www.fishtrack.com/fishwire/mercury-levels-in-bluefin-tuna-dropping_143780
• http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/less-pollution-makes-for-less-mercury-in-atlantic-bluefin-tuna/
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dropping-levels-of-mercury-contamination-in-tuna-connected_us_583c661be4b050dfe6187e8d
• http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/12/mercury-tuna-plummets-coal-fired-power-drops

Dr. Nicholas Fisher

Cheng-Shiuan Lee

Above Image: Charles Taber (Dean of the Graduate School), Alfredo Esposito (Undergraduate Liblit Scholar), Michelle Barbosa (Undergraduate Liblit Scholar), Irvin Huang (Graduate Liblit Scholar), Larry Swanson, Michael Cahill

The winners of the 2016 Evan R. Liblit Memorial Scholarships have been announced!

Irvin Huang has won the Liblit Graduate Scholarship ($4,000). Michelle Barbosa and Alfredo Esposito have won the Liblit Undergraduate Scholarships ($1,500 each). The winners were selected on the basis of their accomplishments and interviews with members of the Liblit Memorial Scholarship Steering Committee.

The students were guests at the annual Liblit Memorial Scholarship Awards Breakfast on Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at the Irish Coffee Pub in East Islip.

Congratulations to all three students!!

Anne McElroy, Irvin Huang (Graduate Liblit Scholar) and Michael Cahill (Chair of the Liblit Steering Committee)

Alfredo Esposito (Undergraduate Liblit Scholar)

Michelle Barbosa (Undergraduate Liblit Scholar)

Many thanks for those that joined us on December 14, 2016 for our Holiday Retrospective with great food and people. The highlight was when Santa arrived and the little ones all got a ride with him.

A special thank you to those who helped organize the event including Steve Ortega, Mark Wiggins, Gina Gartin, Ping Liu, Chris Crosby, Malcolm Bowman, and Tom Wilson.

Photos by Gina Gartin, Helen Wilson and Tom Wilson

From “NSF Grant Bolsters Geosciences Education Support for Underrepresented Students” on SBU Happenings, December 21, 2016 with contributions by Brian Colle

Stony Brook University was recently awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop the Stony Brook GeoPATH-IMPACT program. This project expands the university’s two decades long effort to engage underrepresented minority (URM) in the geosciences. This project follows the highly successful GeoPREP program at Stony Brook, which was a 5-year NSF sponsored project to enhance the participation of underrepresented groups in the geosciences through an 8-week summer research program for high school students and a week long workshop for teachers to develop lab exercises for the classroom. The GeoPATH funding will add new elements to draw in URM and low-income community college students into the geosciences. The primary focus will be engaging students in geoscience research projects that will also provide relevance to the chemistry, mathematics, and physics course work the students have taken. These three subject areas, especially math and physics are often stumbling blocks for students who transfer from community colleges to a four-year institution such as Stony Brook University. Our primary goals are to: 1. Mitigate the anxiety that transfer students often feel when confronted with the challenges of math and physics at SBU and 2. To provide a meaningful research experience that enhances the students’ understanding of their chosen geoscience discipline, be it Atmospheric Science (ATM), Geology (GEO), or Marine Science (MAR).

GeoPATH-IMPACT involves collaborations within The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), the Department of Geosciences and the STEM Smart program housed in the Department of Technology and Society. STEM Smart is an amalgam of programs that serve low income and under-represented undergraduate students who are majoring in STEM disciplines. The STEM Smart participating programs will be the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP), the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) and the current OEDG project. Off campus collaborators include Nassau and Suffolk County Community Colleges (NCC and SCCC), both of which are within geographic proximity of the Stony Brook University campus.

GeoPATH will focus on enhancing undergraduate research skills, encouraging matriculation in Geoscience majors and promoting the relevance of geoscience careers as viable career paths in academia, government service, and private industry. The program will allow for some undergraduate stipend and fellowship support. The main features of our IMPACT proposal are:

• Increasing geoscience involvement and experience from high school through the community college to the 4-year institutions.
• Expanding a summer research experiences for community college (CC) students interested in the geosciences through the development of a 6-week summer program at Stony Brook.
• Collaborating with CCs during the academic year with joint club activities, seminars, and mentoring of CC students by SBU faculty, senior undergraduates, and graduate students.
• Working with local CCs to develop curriculum that results in a smoother transition for students from the CC to a 4-year institution, such as SBU.
• Providing scholarship support to students transitioning from CC to SBU geoscience majors, including URMs by incorporating them into the support structures of the University’s CSTEP, LSAMP and OEDG programs.
• Providing more internship and research opportunities for undergraduates in the geosciences at SBU and at other nearby locations (e.g., Brookhaven National Laboratory).
• Collecting data for a longitudinal study that gauges the awareness of, and reasons for students pursuing geoscience majors or leaving the program part way through.

The PI of GeoPATH-IMPACT is Dr. Brian Colle (SoMAS). Co-PIs are Dr. Gilbert Hanson (Geosciences), Dr. Kamazima Lwiza (SoMAS), Dr. Hyemi Kim (SoMAS), and Dr. Edmund Chang (SoMAS). Senior personnel are Mrs Lauren Donovan and Mr. Paul Siegel (Department of Technology and Society). Off campus collaborators are Mr. Sean Tvelia and Dr. Candice Foley from SCCC and Lisa Bastiaans from NCC. The funded amount is $409,289.

Photo above by Kevin Katcher:  using an airlift

Using an underwater vacuum to suck clams from a seagrass bed might not be the first choice of activity for everyone traveling to a tropical destination, but when Diana Chin had the opportunity to apply for funding to do it, she jumped at the chance. Diana, a PhD candidate in the Peterson Lab, recently returned from a 14-week visit to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) Bocas del Toro research station in Panama. She was investigating mutualism among chemosymbiotic clams and tropical seagrasses as part of her dissertation research, in collaboration with Smithsonian Staff Scientist Dr. Andrew Altieri.

Seagrasses are flowering marine plants with numerous ecologically and economically valuable functions in coastal areas: they blunt wave energy, trap and stabilize sediment, sequester carbon, and provide food, habitat, and nursery grounds for many other species. Sediments from seagrass beds tend to have a strong “rotten egg” smell because seagrasses shed leaves that are then decomposed by bacteria, producing sulfides. At very high concentrations, or in combination with other stressors like high temperature or high salinity, sulfides can damage or kill seagrasses.

Clams in the family Lucinidae are common in seagrass beds worldwide. Lucinid clams have chemosynthetic bacteria in their gills that convert sulfides to non-toxic sulfate and produce food for themselves and their hosts in the process. Recent studies (van der Heide et al. 2012, de Fouw et al. 2016) have shown that one species of lucinid can lower sulfide levels in seagrass beds, reducing the negative effects of sulfides on seagrass growth. The lucinids then benefit from the oxygen that healthy seagrass releases through its roots.

Diana wanted to know: does this mutualism exist in other tropical regions with different species of lucinid and seagrass? Do different species of lucinid have different effects on sulfide levels in sediment? Beyond oxygen, does seagrass benefit lucinids by shielding them from predators? And what can the abundance and distribution of lucinids tell us about the current status of their relationship to seagrass?

To answer these questions, Diana conducted an intensive survey of 11 seagrass sites in Bocas del Toro. The data collected at each site included water quality parameters, sediment porewater sulfide concentrations, lucinid abundance, and standing seagrass biomass. She also conducted laboratory experiments to measure changes in sediment sulfide levels in the presence of lucinids and a field experiment to determine whether lucinids affect seagrass growth. She discussed her research at a public talk in Bocas Town in October 2016 and will present additional results at the upcoming Benthic Ecology Meeting in Myrtle Beach, SC in April.

Diana was joined in Panama by full-time assistants Kevin Katcher and William Wied (SoMAS ‘16). Will earned a B.S. in Marine Sciences after working as a research assistant and technician in the Peterson Lab in 2015 and 2016. He will be returning to Bocas in March as a Smithsonian Intern.

Diana’s research in Panama was supported by the federal Graduate Research Internship Program (GRIP), which is open to recipients of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and by a STRI Short-Term Fellowship.

Photo above by Diana China: a lucinid, Ctena orbiculata

About the Author

Diana Chin is a PhD candidate in the Peterson Lab with broad interests in marine community ecology and a professional background in environmental risk assessment. Her dissertation research concerns the origin and maintenance of facultative mutualism, with specific focus on the chemical and biological interactions between seagrasses and chemosymbiotic bivalves.

Photo above:  The wildlife tank from the Quogue Wildlife Refuge

From University Enjoys Great Relationship With Wildlife Refuge by Glenn Jochum on Stony Brook Matters, February 14, 2017

As every Biology 101 student knows, symbiosis is a mutually beneficial relationship between two different entities. That’s a good definition of the ties between the Quogue Wildlife Refuge and Stony Brook University.

Two of the refuge’s seven staff members are former Stony Brook students and the Refuge’s employees have participated in the University’s annual Earthstock celebration since 2012, educating Stony Brook students about Long Island’s natural world and its inhabitants.

The refuge actively recruits its interns at Earthstock because of Stony Brook’s focus on sustainability. The unpaid intern position is for 10 to 20 hours per week for a college student studying environmental, educational or animal-related sciences.

“Our experience with Stony Brook students has been great — they’ve always been excellent interns,” says Assistant Director Marisa Nelson. “They are dedicated to their field of study, and luckily for us have knowledge about relevant environmental issues.”

Some of Stony Brook’s students have also found employment with the 305-acre non-profit nature preserve to be a perfect fit.

Cara Fernandes ’16 of Baiting Hollow, New York, started at the refuge as an intern during summer 2014 as a co-educator for the Little Naturalist summer camp program.

These days she coordinates and teaches educational programs about Long Island’s native plants, animals and ecology to a variety of audiences. She also cares for permanently injured wildlife, feeding them and administering medicine.

Her stewardship during her academic career at Stony Brook includes stints as president and secretary/event coordinator of the Long Island Water Environment Association, where she planned and executed events such as beach cleanups. As an eco-leader with the Office of Sustainability on campus, she participated in numerous recycling events and tree plantings. Cara also encouraged young students to pursue a career in marine and atmospheric science as a volunteer in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl Region Competition, the Bay Scallop Bowl, held on campus.

“Seeing so many students, faculty and professionals excited about the environment increased my interest in my career path, especially after attending the Indianapolis Prize nomination lunch for Carl Safina and Patricia Wright,” says Cara.

Cara developed a love for the natural world because her father encouraged her sister and her to accompany him on hikes across Long Island.

What she most loves about her job at the refuge is teaching children and visitors about the environment.

Cara Fernandes ’16

Kimberly Stever ‘13 of Rocky Point, New York, said that Stony Brook helped her embark on a meaningful career.

“My job at Quogue Wildlife Refuge was a happy accident. I had graduated from Stony Brook and was having trouble finding a position that suited my interests,” Kimberly says.

She recommends that students contemplating careers in the environmental sciences take advantage of internships. “Many nature organizations on Long Island are small places and they remember people who put their time in there and care.”

At the refuge, Kimberly maintains social media accounts, oversees catalog donations and assures that all donors receive proper acknowledgment. She also plans the Refuge’s annual benefit gala, feeds and cares for animals, educates the public, and facilitates promotional planning and events. “The great thing about working here is that we all wear so many hats,” she adds.

Kimberly Stever ‘13

During the spring and fall, the refuge sends representatives to educate the public at fairs, including Earthstock, where Quogue Wildlife Refuge staffer Tony Valderrama appeared the last three years.

“We usually bring an animal based on specific conditions like the weather and the duration of the program we are featuring,” Tony says. “From my experience people, love all animals but owls are a favorite, probably because they’re so elusive but vocal in their nocturnal behavior.

“The interaction between the students and the wildlife is priceless,” he adds. “My hope is that these simple interactions become a catalyst for future environmentalists. We are lucky to have the best interns every year who come from Stony Brook to work with us.”

The 2017 Bay Scallop Bowl was a great success–thank you to all who attended and the students who participated! The success of the Bowl could not be achieved without the help of the volunteers and the extraordinary effort of Rachel Silver, Kim Knoll and Bill Wise. The competition was opened by Stony Brook University Provost Michael Bernstein and New York State Assemblyman Steve Englebright.

16 teams arrived at the Student Activities Center on Saturday, February 18th to compete. The following schools were represented:

Bellport High School
Churchville-Chili Senior High School
Division Avenue High School
Great Neck South High School
Half Hollow Hills HS East
Hunter College High School
Huntington High School
Locust Valley High School A & B
Massapequa High School
Midwood High School
Mount Sinai High School A & B
RC Murphy Junior High School
Woodlands High School

In a close finish, Mt. Sinai Team A edged out Great Neck High School South by one point in an overtime match. To force a play-off, Great Neck South beat Mt. Sinai soundly in the preceding round, but Mt. Sinai demonstrated admirable coastal resilience and bounced right back to win. Hunter College High School took third place.

Mt. Sinai High School will go on to compete in the 20th Annual National Ocean Sciences Bowl Finals Competition which will be held in Corvallis, Oregon from April 20 – 23, 2017 at Oregon State University!

In conjunction with the SoMAS recruitment weekend, you are cordially invited to “travel around the world” at our annual International Potluck Dinner on Friday, March 10, at 5:00 p.m. in Endeavour Hall 120.

The SoMAS family is proud to be home to faculty, staff and students from all stretches of the globe.  What better way to welcome our prospective students than to show off our diverse range of heritages and culture with a great night of ethnic appetizers, entrees and desserts.  We hope that you, your family members and/or guests are able to join us for a festive night of cultural sharing.

Photos by Gina Gartin and John Graham

The UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH & CREATIVE ACTIVITIES (URECA) program, founded in 1987, awards research funding and travel grants to undergraduates, and is a central point of contact for students and faculty engaged in research and creative endeavors. URECA helps bring together students and research mentors, hosts annual events to showcase student work, and publishes an annual collection of undergraduate abstracts. Check our URECA website for “Researcher of the Month” features. URECA is a program within the Office of the Provost/Division of Undergraduate Education and is funded in part by the Simons Foundation.

Every year, students submit an abstract for the poster symposium.  The SoMAS students who presented posters at the URECA Celebration are listed below, with their poster title and mentor.

218 Michelle Barbosa

Enhanced Susceptibility to Microbial Infections in Bivalve Larvae and Juveniles Exposed to Acidified Seawater

Bassem Allam, SoMAS

A major stressor that has gained significant importance in the last few decades is a reduction in seawater pH resulting from elevated anthropogenic CO 2 emissions in the atmosphere. Among marine organisms, shelled mollusks and most specifically bivalves are considered very sensitive to the effects of ocean acidification as acidified conditions affect shell deposition. Acclimation of bivalves to stressful environments with low pH could result in significant costs at the expense of growth or immune functions. This study was designed to assess the physiological cost of resilience to acidification in the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica and the hard clam Mercenaria mercenaria. Specifically, we evaluated the effect of acidification on immunity and resistance of bivalve larval and juvenile stages to major microbial pathogens. Wild adult clams and oysters were separately spawned under normal conditions (400ppm) and resultant larvae were cultured under normal (400ppm) or high (1000ppm) pCO 2 conditions. Larvae (2 days old) and post-sets (28 days) grown under each condition were exposed to prominent bacterial pathogens of bivalves (Vibrio coralliilyticus, V. alginolyticus, and Listonella anguillarum) in two different experimental designs. In one design, CO 2 was bubbled directly into the experimental containers to maintain a stable pH. In the second design, no CO 2 was bubbled in which allowed pH to fluctuate and equilibrate between both treatments. In both designs, organisms were held at the same pH conditions under which they were grown. Results of both designs showed that larval bivalves exposed to higher pCO 2 conditions displayed significantly higher mortality rates following bacterial challenge than bivalves exposed to normal conditions. The study is ongoing and results from exposures of older bivalves will be presented. These findings improve our understanding of how simultaneous acidification and pathogen stress affects larval and juvenile shellfish and provide a more comprehensive view of the potential impacts of ocean acidification on shellfish resources.

This work is supported by funding through NOAA’s Northeast Sea Grant College Consortium in partnership with NOAA Ocean Acidification Program.

219 Nicole Casamassina

Analysis of Geographic Vulnerability of Areas Impacted by Hurricanes and Tropical Storms During the 2012 North Atlantic Hurricane Season Using GIS

Sung-Gheel Jang, SoMAS, Geospatial Center

The 2012 North Atlantic Hurricane Season was one of the busiest hurricane seasons on record. However, no major hurricanes made landfall to the United States.  The cyclones that did make landfall, Tropical Storms Beryl and Debby, Hurricane Isaac, and Post-Tropical Storm Sandy, had significant impact on society and geography in many areas of the country.  The use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to show vulnerability can help emergency decision makers for the public by providing maps of potential coastal flooding, storm surge, and the number of people affected by severe weather events.  In addition, these maps can be used in future natural disasters as a reference.

For this project, Esri ArcGIS Version 10.4.1 was used to evaluate geographic vulnerability of the counties impacted by the storms previously listed.  An assessment of storm surge using land cover shows which areas were most impacted by coastal flooding.  Data was used from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United States Census Bureau, Esri, and the United States Geological Survey.

Using a geospatial analysis, one would find that the effects of storm surge is greater toward the shoreline, rather than inland, and damage to infrastructure is greatest in areas of coastal flooding.  Using these maps and data, people living in counties vulnerable to being impacted by tropical cyclones can better assess their risk using visual aids and government officials can create better safety and evacuation plans for when these events occur.

220 Mahin Choudhury Amrit Dhillon Serafina Margono Alex Mardon Mateo Mezic Feisal Sahebzada Nawin Sahebzada Roman Sahebzada Tayeb Sahebzada Rajwinder Singh Agatha Sleboda Akhil Saini Shabir Zahir

Can Roundup Ready Soybeans Translocate Enough Glyphosate into the Soil to Harm Non-Target Organism?

Sharon Pochron, SoMAS Sustainability Studies

Glyphosate accounts for over 80 percent of total herbicide use in the United States with over 128 million pounds sprayed annually. Farmers minimize waste by focusing their application on plant leaves and avoiding the soil. However, plants are known to translocate glyphosate beneath the soil surface, and the glyphosate can contact non-target organisms, including earthworms. Using genetically modified Roundup Ready soybeans, we examined the plants’ ability to carry levels of glyphosate dangerous to earthworms into the soil. We used two treatments. Treatment one contained Roundup Ready seeds without Roundup. Treatment two contained Roundup Ready with 0.2 ml of Roundup applied at the first trifoliate stage. Two weeks later we measured earthworm mortality, body weight, and survivorship under heat and light stress. We found that mortality remained unaffected across both treatments. The direct application of Roundup affected worm body weight and survival in the face of stress significantly. This implies that by minimizing glyphosate applications, farmers can reduce the ecological effects of glyphosate on non-target

221 Mahin Choudhury Amrit Dhillon Brett Keeler Serafina Margono Mateo Mezic Clayton Salamon Rajwinder Singh Agatha Sleboda

The Effect of a Plant-Translocated Herbicide on Earthworm Health

Sharon Pochron SoMAS Sustainability Studies

This work was supported with funding from Dr. Barry S. Coller.

Sustainability Studies Earthworm Ecotoxicology Lab The US annually sprays 130 million pounds of glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup. Farmers attempt to minimize their use of glyphosate by directly injecting the leaves of their crops, but plants are known to translocate glyphosate beneath the soil surface. The effects of plant-translocated glyphosate on earthworms and microorganisms remain unstudied. We tested the translocative properties of conventional soybean plants by using three treatment groups. The control contained no soybeans or Roundup. We sprayed Roundup on Group A during the first trifoliate stage, and we applied Roundup directly on the soil in Group B, which contained no soybean seed. Fourteen days later we measured earthworm mortality, body weight, and survivorship through heat stress. We found that mortality did not differ amongst the three groups. Worms with higher body weight lived longer under heat stress, but treatment type did not significantly affect body weight. Group A exhibited higher survivorship in the face of stress compared to Group B.

222 Mahin Choudhury Rhiannon Gomez Sojjad Hussaini Kyra Illuzzi Michael Mann Mateo Mezic Jaqueline Nikakis Clara Tucker

Factors Affecting Earthworm Sensitivity to a Popular Glyphosate-Based Herbicide

Sharon Pochron, SoMAS Sustainability Studies

Many farmers use glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup to increase harvest yield. These herbicides affect non-target organism, including red wiggler earthworms, Eisenia fetida, an organism designated by the EU, OECD, ISO and FAO as an indicator species. Many researchers have analyzed the effects of Roundup and glyphosate on earthworm health, finding inconsistent results. Some studies show that glyphosate has a negative effect, others find no effect, and still others find a positive effect. We've found the same sort of inconsistencies in our own lab. This project aimed to determine which factor might drive earthworm sensitivity to Roundup. Taking cues from the literature and our own work, we examined the effect of soil temperature, initial earthworm size, and the interaction between the two on final earthworm weight after a month of exposure to contamination. We also examined the effect of those variables on earthworm survival in a stressful environment. We used eight tanks to establish a 2 x 3 factorial design using initial worm size, soil temperature, and Roundup contamination as the three factors. After 28 days of exposure, we recorded earthworm body weight (g) and length of survivorship under stress (min). We found that both initial body size and soil temperature affected earthworm sensitivity to Roundup. Large worms grown in hot soil responded to Roundup contamination by growing significantly larger. Regardless of initial body size, earthworms living in unheated soil lived significantly shorter in the face of stress, with Roundup-exposed worms surviving for the shortest number of minutes overall. This study shows that earthworm sensitivity to Roundup varies with factors such as initial body size and soil temperature. This may explain the variation in the published literature, where neither factor is generally reported or controlled.

223 Mahin Choudhury Amrit Dhillon Mateo Mezic Nawin Sahebzada Akhil Saini Rajwinder Singh Agatha Sleboda Clara Tucker

The Short-Term Effect of Fertilizer and Roundup on Earthworm Body Weight, Fragility, and Neurological Function

Sharon Pochron, SoMAS Sustainability Studies

Mahin Choudhury completed this research in partial fulfillment of his Honor’s Project.

The US applies 130 million pounds of herbicides and 20 million tons of fertilizer to the soil annually. The interaction between these two chemicals and how it impacts Eisenia fetida, a bioindicator of soil health, remains unstudied. We tested the short-term effects of fertilizer and Roundup on earthworm body weight, fragility, and neurological function with four treatment groups: a control, a group that received only fertilizer, a group that received only Roundup, and a group that received fertilizer and Roundup. After 28 days, we extracted five worms from each treatment to test the medial giant fiber activity for action potential propagation velocity. We extracted the remaining worms to look for differences in average mortality, body weight, and survivorship in the face of heat and light stress. We found that neither mortality nor body weight differed significantly across treatments. Earthworms exposed to both fertilizer and Roundup together survived for significantly fewer minutes than worms exposed to either contaminant alone. The treatment group with both fertilizer and Roundup had slower action potential propagation speed than the other treatments.

224 Andrew Clay Rebecca Glayzer Harrison Watters

Human and Animal Traffic through Ashley Schiff Park Preserve on Stony Brook University Campus

Sharon Pochron, SoMAS Sustainability Studies

Continuing ongoing research, this study was conducted to estimate the daily amount of human and animal traffic through the Ashley Schiff Park Preserve on Stony Brook University campus.  Utilizing four Simon’s Whitetail motion-activated cameras with infrared night-vision, we collected time-stamped pictures capturing anything that entered the park at the four hiking trail entrances.  At these locations, human entrance into the park was recorded in regard to group size and activity (walking, biking, running).   Two additional cameras were set up deeper into the woods to collect more pictures of Whitetail Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) after past results predicted the park could be a refuge for deer populations.  Increased park usage was found to occur during the spring and fall semesters, and a decline in use during the campus winter and summer intersessions.  This study into the patterns and values of visitors into the park preserve may serve well as a reference for park management and future studies.

225 Sarah Habashy Sajjad Hussaini Kyra Illuzzi Jennifer Maldonado Michael Mann Alex Mardon Michael Moawad Marina Nasr Jackie Nikakis Justin Roseman Akhil Saini Daniella Sallangos Mobina Talukder Katherine Tsui

Sublethal Effects of a Popular Herbicide (Roundup) on Earthworms (Eisenia fetida)

Sharon Pochron, SoMAS Sustainability Studies

Glyphosate was first introduced as an herbicide product to farmers in 1974. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Round Up, While the lethality of Roundup (RU) on earthworms has been examined, its sublethal effects are not well understood. We studied the effect of a particular chemical formulation, Ready Roundup, on earthworm health, specifically earthworm body weight and survivorship under stressful conditions (heat stress). We set up eight tanks containing 30 earthworms and 4.5 kilos of outdoor soil in each tank. We contaminated four tanks with 6mL of Roundup Ready-To- Use solution and left four tanks untreated. After 35 days of exposure, we recorded earthworm body weight and placed each worm into its own Petri dish. We then placed the Petri dishes in a heated (90°F) and well lit environment. The worms were monitored at 5-minute intervals and the time of deaths were recorded in order to quantify survivorship at the completion of the study. We found that average weight of worms exposed to RU showed a significant decrease in average body weight. After exposure to heat stress, the time of deaths between both groups did not differ. When exposed to RU, Eisenia fetida display evidence for some predicted sublethal effects, but it remains challenging to project our findings more generally to other common worm species.

226 Emily Kollmer

The Relationship of Sediment Carbonate Content to Mollusk Communities in Seagrass Beds of Bocas del Toro, Panama

Bradley Peterson SoMAS

Lucinid clams can form a symbiotic relationship with seagrasses: lucinids and their sulfur-oxidizing bacterial symbionts take up sulfide from sediment, which is detrimental to seagrasses in high concentrations; the seagrasses provide lucinids with oxygen and sulfide for their symbionts as well as physical protection from predators. Lucinids can also facultatively suspension feed. While lucinids are dominant members of seagrass communities worldwide, the relationships of lucinids to environmental conditions and to other seagrass infauna are not well characterized. To explore these relationships, we surveyed mollusk communities at 11 seagrass sites in Bahía Almirante, Bocas del Toro, Panama, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). At each site, we excavated replicate pits for assessment of the local mollusk assemblage. Live and subfossil lucinids were identified and enumerated, and representative examples of all other subfossil bivalve and gastropod shells were identified to the lowest practical taxonomic level. We also analyzed replicate sediment cores for percent carbonate content as a proxy for sulfide availability. As we predicted, live and/or subfossil lucinids were found at all sites, along with diverse mollusk communities. Percent carbonate content of sediment was not clearly related to the diversity of lucinid or overall mollusk communities. However, total abundance of lucinids tended to increase with percent carbonate content while the percentage of suspension feeding mollusk species decreased. This supports the idea that lucinids may have a competitive advantage over other suspension feeders in high-carbonate/low- iron sediments, where high sulfide availability in sediment may be coupled with low availability of suspended particles in the water column.

227 Sarah Nickford

Mechanhisms Controlling Surface Temperature and Chlorophyll Distribution in the Labrador Sea

Kamazima Lwiza, SoMAS

The goal of this project was to determine the relationship between characteristics of the North Atlantic Ocean, Labrador Sea and Arctic Ocean through the Davis Strait by analyzing the interannual variability of physical parameters. This study analyzed anomalies of sea surface temperature (SST), chlorophyll-a, cloud cover, surface winds, 500mb geopotential height, and Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR). Composite analysis was applied on monthly data obtained from satellites (MODIS-Aqua, SeaWiFS, NOAA) and reanalysis data (CFSR) to examine the spatial fluctuations in anomalies and attempt to characterize them based on the behavior of other selected parameters for the month of August from 1997-2016. Also, spatial and temporal patterns were analyzed by Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis in order to obtain a thorough understanding of the changing patterns with time. The results of the EOF produced principle components which were used to establish relationships the temporal components of variability with indices of climatic patterns, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), El Nino- Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and Arctic Oscillation (AO). Mode 1 of summertime SST seems to be driven by ENSO (correlation r=-0.5) and NAO (r=-0.6). Mode 2 seems to be dominated by AO (correlation r=0.5). The results of the composite analysis exhibit a strong relationship between anomalously warm SST and anomalously high chlorophyll off the southeast coast of Greenland in 2003, 2010, and 2016. Anomalous warming or cooling in the Davis Strait can be attributed to a buttressing effect by zonal wind stress. The results of the EOF analysis show climatic teleconnections with Greenland SST. Also the results of composite analysis highlight the importance of local dynamics.

228 Clara Tucker Charles Patterson Nick Panico

The Response of Earthworms (Eisenia fetida) and Soil Microbes to the Crumb Rubber Material Used in Artificial Turf Fields

Sharon Pochron, SoMAS

This paper has been published in Chemosphere. Charlie Patterson and Clara Tucker are in the Honors College. Nick Panico is a University Scholar.

Municipalities have been replacing grass fields with artificial turf, which uses crumb rubber infill made from recycled tires. Crumb rubber contains hydrocarbons, organic compounds, and heavy metals. Water runoff from crumb rubber fields contains heavy metals. These components can damage the environment. We contaminated topsoil with new crumb rubber and measured its impact on earthworms and soil microbes. Specifically, we compared soil microbe activity and earthworm health, survivorship, and longevity in heat and light stress under two soil regimes: clean topsoil and clean topsoil contaminated with crumb rubber. We then characterized levels of metals, nutrients, and micronutrients of both soil treatments and compared those to published New York soil background levels and to levels set by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) as remediation goals. We found that: 1) contaminated soil did not inhibit microbial respiration rates, 2) earthworm survivorship was not impacted by exposure to contaminated soil, 3) earthworms' ability to cope with heat and light stress remained unchanged after living in contaminated soil, but 4) earthworms living in contaminated soil gained 14% less body weight than did earthworms living in uncontaminated soil. We also found that, with the exception of zinc, heavy metals in our contaminated soil did not exceed the background levels found throughout New York State or the remediation targets set by the DEC.

Above: Alfredo Esposito ’18, left, with Professor Jeffrey Levinton

From Alfredo Esposito ’18 Accepts Eng Scholarship in Environmental Studies by Glenn Jochum on SBU Happenings, April 24, 2017

Bringing together the festive atmosphere of Stony Brook’s annual Earthstock celebration with the serious business of scholarship, Alfredo Esposito ’18 was awarded the Jeffrey Eng Memorial Scholarship in Environmental Studies at the Earthstock keynote event, held April 20 at the Sidney Gelber Auditorium in the Student Activities Center. Alfredo accepted the honor from Jeffrey Levinton, Distinguished Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolution.

For Alfredo, it all began with a gift from his father — a fish tank. The Levittown resident was drawn towards health science, but after caring for the fish in his home he knew that marine biology would be his academic career path.

“I think that I take after my father, who loves animals and the outdoors and I realized that I could not stand to lose such beautiful creatures to human-related causes,” said Alfredo, who chose to major in marine vertebrate biology during the end of his freshman year.

“I decided to get my feet wet with a couple of research opportunities to fully understand what a scientist does in order to suggest solutions for the environmental problems that they find,” he said.

What sealed his commitment was volunteering for the Shinnecock Restoration Program (ShiRP) in the summer of 2016.

ShiRP is dedicated to making the Shinnecock Bay habitable again for marine organisms. Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), along with its Institute for Ocean Conservation Science (IOCS), founded the program to return the bay to its former health.

Alfredo participated in a biweekly boat trawl surveying 13 stations across Shinnecock Bay, catching and releasing organisms via otter trawl. He and his fellow researchers counted and sorted all of the biomass for lab analysis, ranging from algae to a variety of fish.

Jeffrey Eng was a junior at Stony Brook University when he lost his life in an automobile accident in 2006. His parents established an endowed scholarship in his memory in 2007, which has been administered by the Department of Ecology and Evolution in 2008.

“The scholarship supports a student whose academic focus is on environmental science and who has demonstrated continuing achievement and a willingness to help others and who has financial need,” said Professor Levinton.

“Alfredo has exhibited outstanding aptitudes for scientific work as well as for outreach events, thanks to his passion for the environment, dedication and charismatic personality,” Levinton added.

ShiRP is predicated on the fact that the Shinnecock Bay is deteriorating — water quality is declining, habitats are disappearing and shellfish populations have diminished sharply. The changing ecosystem is impacting marine animals, seabirds and the people who live near to and utilize the bay as well.

For example, many seagrasses are extremely sensitive to decreases in light penetration due to algal blooms. Less seagrass translates to fewer fish and shellfish.

Factors leading to this deterioration include overfishing and nutrient inputs from septic systems and fertilizers.

“I was humbled that I was selected as the recipient for this generous award as I always assume that there are other students tens of hundreds times more qualified than I am who are making world-wide changes,” said Alfredo.

“Last summer a group of United Nations ambassadors visited us on Shinnecock Bay to see the effort that not only scientists and stakeholders but donors and the public have done to restore the once pristine Bay,” said Alfredo. “This includes eel grass restoration, plantings and oyster gardens and the creation of marine-protected areas within the Bay. The results here can further persuade those in higher positions in a way that can effectively cause global change.”

— Glenn Jochum