Two weeks ago, the National Museum of Natural History held a special poster session for its summer Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) students. Megan Moore and Allison Snider, two of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology (IZ)’s own REU students, presented. Moore was mentored by research zoologist Jon Norenburg and support scientist Herman Wirshing, and Snider, by Nancy Knowlton (Sant Chair for Marine Science) and postdoctoral fellow Matthieu Leray. The session was well attended by folks throughout the museum, including many of the students’ mentors and other staff.
Allison (left) and Megan (right) stand by their posters. This year, the REU program included a seminar on scientific poster design. Clearly, they both paid attention!
Barcoding and metabarcoding the cryptofauna of the Northern Red Sea
This summer, Allison joined an international team of invertebrate researchers studying the biodiversity of the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan. Not only is this region understudied, says Allison, but also the small invertebrates living there. Hence, Allison’s project was specifically focused on two size classes of invertebrates, organisms ranging from 500 micron to 2 mm in size and organisms greater than 2 mm.
To gain a better understanding of the biodiversity in this region, the team placed autonomous reef monitoring system (ARMS) units in the gulf. The ARMS units were recovered at a later date, and the organisms adhering to their surfaces were removed for study. While standard DNA barcoding techniques could be used for the “large” organisms (2 mm and above), Allison used metabarcoding for the smaller class, which means that the different types of organisms were not separated from each other but were batch processed.
As a result of this project, Allison not only learned about biodiversity issues but also developed a solid understanding of the DNA barcoding process, which entails the techniques of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the DNA sequence of interest and DNA sequence alignment using BLAST and other databases.
For Allison, of course, the experience was also important on many other levels. She says that her time in IZ was “Amazing. It’s been absolutely incredible…I learned a lot and met a lot of really great people in the lab.”
“I've always loved museums, so to come here [the Smithsonian Institution] was better than I ever could have imagined,” she related, beaming. Allison is a rising senior at Central Michigan University, majoring in the natural resources track of the biology program. Allison looks forward to applying to graduate school programs.
Illuminating the evolutionary history of a group of miniaturized worms, the Nemertean genus Ototyphlonemertes
Ototyphlonemertes. Worm is about 0.15 mm thick. The worms use an eversible proboscis with a dagger-like stylet and neurotoxins to capture other small worms and crustaceans.
When asked about her experience in IZ, REU student Megan Moore expressed a similar sentiment as Allison, stating that “I had a lot of fun doing this project, meeting new people - just being at the Smithsonian is a really rewarding experience. Seeing the collections has been really great.”
Megan spent her summer working on Jon Norenburg’s project to discover the evolutionary history of the genus Ototyphlonemertes as a means to understanding its morphological characters. Support scientist Herman Wirshing, whom we have previously featured in No Bones for his excellent work in the Smithsonian Laboratories of Analytical Biology (a.k.a., The LAB), provided a lot of Megan’s lab training. “Working with her was very easy, pleasant. She picked up things right away and was a good listener. She was very self-directed,” says Herman.
For the project, Megan studied tiny nemertean worms, which are small enough to glide unimpeded through the aqueous pore space of coarse sand beaches. Because of their small size (about the thickness of a hair) and general lack of any mineralized structure, nemertean worms are unrepresented in the fossil record. The specific worms that Megan studied were recovered at an earlier date by Jon from Puerto Rico and French Polynesia, though no Ototyphlonemertes were previously known from these regions. There are 26 named species in the genus, and for this project, the team looked at worms that closely resembled 6 of these already known species.
The work revealed several interesting findings, such as examples of cryptic speciation (the DNA data suggests that morphologically similar worms actually are distinct species), sympatric cryptic species (morphologically indistinguishable species that live together), and allopatric cryptic species (living in different sites). These findings are very interesting news, because they suggest that there are (possibly many!) more species of Nemertea than can be recognized from anatomy alone. In the future, says Megan, obtaining more samples of these nemerteans will strengthen their cladistic and biogeographic analyses, which will illuminate the evolution and distribution of these worms. Additionally, she notes that working with such small, carnivorous organisms poses a significant challenge, because not only are they sampling the nemertean organism’s DNA when they process a specimen but also any other worm or crustacean prey contained in its gut.
Beach at Rincon, Puerto Rico. A typical coarse-sand, high-energy beach favored by Ototyphlonemertes.
Like Allison, Megan is a rising senior. This coming year she expects to finish her bachelor’s in forestry and agriculture at the University of Maine in Orono. Then, before applying to graduate school, she plans to take a few years to gain more experience in the research environment, to better direct her future career choice. That said, right now Megan is very excited about staying in marine ecology and would like to find a way to tie that field in with experience working with tribal communities.
Why the REU experience is so important
The REU program is specifically aimed at providing research opportunities to undergraduate students who might not otherwise have them, such as students at liberal arts schools and other non-research institutions. The National Science Foundation funds REU sites at 650 locations throughout the United States, making the REU program the most extensive undergraduate-focused research program in the country.
According to IZ department chair Jon Norenburg, REUs are particularly important opportunities for undergraduates who are thinking about pursuing graduate school, allowing them to “experience a research internship to give them real-world exposure to the many facets of a research program.” Jon likens REUs to learning “how the sausage is made,” because they give students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the research process and “test their aptitude for participating in it.”
Herman says that although this was his first time mentoring an undergraduate in IZ, he enjoyed the experience and would gladly participate in such a role again. Generally, he notes, “[undergraduates] are very enthusiastic. They're very easy to work with because they want to learn,” also relating that “it's a good opportunity for us as researchers to get in their minds, to be able to take the concepts back to those early stages and figure out how to break them down” to become better at relating difficult ideas to those less familiar.
The REU program is important to IZ in particular “because many aspects of invertebrate natural history are grossly understudied and many of us hope that at least some of our interns will go on to productive careers as colleagues,” says Jon. “However, regardless of an intern’s career interests, working with an intern is almost always rewarding,” he continues. “It’s good to feel that you are sending [your student intern] off into the world at least a little better equipped for their future than when they arrived.”
Interested in a summer research internship at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History? Learn more here.
The NMNH REU site is funded by National Science Foundation award #1062692 through the Division of Earth Sciences in the Directorate for Geosciences.
by Liz Boatman