Category: Science Communication

Field Stories: Coastal Resiliency in Georgia

8/26/2024

On a recent trip to Georgia, I found myself unexpectedly (and directly!) in the path of Tropical Storm Debby. The rainfall, flooding, and wind prevented me from visiting Sapelo Island, but I was still able to participate in a week long workshop about science communication and bioinformatics in Savannah with some fellow marine scientists.

While we experienced substantial rainfall in Savannah for several days, there was less flooding than initially forecasted. Given the circumstances, I was curious about the factors of coastal resiliency in Georgia that may have contributed to reducing the impact of flooding during Debby.

Having collected wild oysters from Georgia for my dissertation, I knew that there are expansive natural oyster reef structures along the coastlines in the greater Savannah area. Specifically, I know that native oyster reefs play a role in shielding the coast from storm surge and erosion.

Tropical Storm Debby was forecasted to bring close to 30 inches of rain to Savannah, GA, a record rainfall. Image credit: NOAA & Savannah Morning News

Some wild local oysters near Savannah, GA. Some oyster reefs occur deeper in the water column (subtidally) where they are fully covered by water. This reef is intertidal, where the oysters are exposed to air during low tides.

With a growing number of people living in coastal areas along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the US, it's imperative to better understand coastal mitigation strategies in the face of rapidly intensifying storms and climate change events. Natural oyster reefs are ecosystem engineers that provide a physical barrier which mitigates storm surges and prevents successive erosion (Chowdhury et al 2021). Beyond physical factors, filter-feeding oysters clear bacteria that enters the water through storm drainage and runoff. Oyster reefs also provide valuable structural habitat for many marine species. This habitat is the foundation for biodiverse ecosystems and healthy fisheries that remain resilient to extreme climatic events (Chowdhury et al 2021).

To investigate additional factors of coastal resilience in Georgia, I visited Tybee Island, just east of Savannah, with other workshop attendees. While there, we were inundated with heavy rain and wind, but we were able to identify several features of the landscape that, in part, play a role in buffering the coastline from storms.

I teamed up with scientists Damián Santiago-Sosa, Paul Okrah, Darrian Talamantes, and Mai Fahmy, who shared their expertise on resilient coastal ecosystems and how marine scientists study these coastlines in the video that we created!

Check out our video on features of resilient coastlines such as sand dunes, bacteria, and biodiversity! These resilient features are similar among many coastlines in different marine environments, so next time you're on the coast, see how many of these features you can identify.

We encountered strong winds & rain on Tybee Island from Tropical Storm Debby!

Coastal scientists Paul Okrah and Damián Santiago-Sosa on Tybee Island with me!

Citations
1. Chowdhury, Mohammed Shah Nawaz, Megan La Peyre, Loren D. Coen, Rebecca L. Morris, Mark W. Luckenbach, Tom Ysebaert, Brenda Walles, and Aad C. Smaal. "Ecological engineering with oysters enhances coastal resilience efforts." Ecological Engineering 169 (2021): 106320

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Protocol: ImageJ for Oyster Shell Parasites

7/18/2024

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Few studies have investigated how abiotic, biotic, and genetic conditions combined impact range-wide infestation rates of parasites on wild eastern oysters. I aim to map these spatial patterns of parasite infestation across the seascape and determine whether patterns correlate with environmental factors (temperature, salinity, co-occurring parasitic infestations) and/or population genetics. To achieve this, I am mapping the prevalence of parasitic Polydora worm blisters in eastern oyster shells.

I've co-authored a lab protocol for using ImageJ to extract parasitic worm blister data with Lotterhos Lab summer intern Lisa Gouralnik! This protocol provides guidelines for identifying polydora worm blisters, using ImageJ to calculate total shell areas and areas of blister infection, and creating high-quality composite images.

The Polydora worm burrows into oyster shells, creating irritation and weakening shell integrity. Infected oysters exhibit a lower condition index, a measure of health, than uninfected oysters.

Eastern oyster shells from the coastal Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico show parasitic worm blisters, outlined in dashed lines.

Above: Lisa in the shell imaging lab at the Marine Science Center. Right: Excerpt from the protocol about collecting data on complex colored blisters.

Lisa collected >2000 data points on the polydora worm blisters over the past two months of their internship. It was great to mentor them on this project, and I'm excited to get to the next steps of data analysis!

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Protocols for Building Academic Websites

6/18/2024

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My new website, madeline-eppley.github.io is published! This is a secondary website that will serve as a protocols repository with my digital lab notebook, coding and bioinformatics tutorials, and online resources for graduate students and academics.

Some of the first content that I have developed is for building personal academic websites. I review options for choosing where to build and host your website, describe content to include, and provide instructions for building a free Quarto website using GitHub and RStudio.

Why build personal academic websites?
Traditional metrics (e.g. citations) by which scientists are evaluated are deeply biased and perpetuate exclusionary networks (Davies et al. 2021). These traditional metrics of "success" directly influence career advancement opportunities, funding, awards, distinctions, tenure, and more. Altmetrics, or alternative metrics, (e.g. social media activity, news articles, interviews, etc.) offer an alternative method for quantitative evaluation. Altmetrics aid in recognizing that valuable scientific impact takes many forms, including equitable communication and translation of science to general audiences (Davies et al 2021). Personal websites positively drive altmetrics, meaning that scientists can directly benefit from having a strong online presence in social media, websites, or press (Peoples et al. 2016). Promoting and evaluating scientific work in diverse ways dismantles perpetuating bias and reliance on traditional citation metrics (Davies et al. 2021).

Beyond this, personal academic websites offer the most complete opportunity to tell the story of yourself and your scientific work. By maintaining a personal website, you have control over keeping URLs, publications, email addresses, and CVs up-to-date, whereas an institutional page may not do so for you. You are also able to link research results, media and press, grant funding, and pictures all together in one place to engage in scientific storytelling with your audience (Figure 1). Funding bodies are now recognizing the value of this type of communication with general audiences, communities, and stakeholders, so having a personal website displays commitment to this broadening values system in science. It's a no-brainer!

Figure 1. Academic website content has three main categories: Research, Science Communication, and Networking

My associated GitHub repository that I used to build my Quarto website is publicly accessible here: github.com/madeline-eppley/madeline-eppley.github.io/tree/main.

Citations
1. Davies SW, Putnam HM, Ainsworth T, Baum JK, Bove CB, Crosby SC, et al. (2021) Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science. PLoS Biol 19(6): e3001282. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001282
2. Peoples BK, Midway SR, Sackett D, Lynch A, Cooney PB (2016) Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological Research. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0166570. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166570

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Field Stories: Coastal Resiliency in Georgia

Protocol: ImageJ for Oyster Shell Parasites

Protocols for Building Academic Websites

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