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Alex Cheroske
B.A. in Aquatic Biology, University of California Santa Barbara 1993.
As far back as high school, I was intent on becoming a marine scientist. Not desiring to leave my native California, I research universities there for programs in marine biology. I decided I wanted to attain a Bachelor's in aquatic biology at University of California Santa Barbara and proceeded to only apply there - not the best plan in the world, but it worked out when I was admitted in the fall of 1988. Supporting myself through college was accomplished through working at a local grocery store chain as a cashier (or laser technician as we like to call it). In 1993, I got my Bachelor's degree but was ill-prepared to continue my next step to a doctorate. With all of the extra hours working at the store, my education suffered a bit since I graduated with no active research experience and my grades were not as high as I would have preferred. I needed a small stepping stone to reach my goal of being a marine scientist. I got that extra step by entering the Master's degree program at San Diego State University in the fall of 1994. When I began the program, I was fairly general in my research interests: subtidal community ecology. That general topic got me paired up with my thesis advisor, Dr. Susan Williams who had just attained an NSF grant to research the ecology of algal turf communities in coral reef environments. At that time, it had recently be discovered that these short, scrubby, filamentous turfs contribute the most to the total primary production of coral reefs, up to 80% in some cases, and have a primary production rate per unit biomass nearly five times that of planktonic algae as well. At the University of Hawaii's marine station in Kaneohe Bay, Susan worked on the effects of water flow on nitrogen fixation in algal turfs. Susan was joined by a another algal turf researcher, Robert Carpenter from California State University at Northridge, who simultaneously studied the effects of water flow on algal turf primary production. While those two were at the lab with their flumes, my research was to determine what factors were affecting algal turf distribution, biomass and canopy height out in Kaneohe Bay itself. After numerous field seasons conducting manipulative experiments in the field and lab, it turns out that both physical disturbance from tumbling coral rubble substratum and biological disturbance from grazing herbivorous fishes and invertebrates were maintaining a algal community dominated by small but very productive algal turf communities on the reef flat. My thesis research and my Master's degree in biology were completed in the spring of 1997. I now had the "know-how" and the better grades to pursue my doctorate. In 1999, I started my Ph. D. in the Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences program at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. After my Master's, I had modified my research interests to the adaptive responses of marine animals to their environment. It was my intent to combine physiological or morphological studies with ecological parameters to integrate organismal changes with its environment using both laboratory and field experiments. When searching for potential doctorate advisors, Dr. Tom Cronin's work on stomatopod vision was a great opportunity to apply my ideas. Cronin, along with Roy Caldwell and Justin Marshall (University of Queensland) had recently discovered the complex visual system of stomatopod crustaceans including their specialized midbands of ommatidia that have specializations such as tiered (and sometimes filtered) rhabdoms, and more than 10 spectral classes of photoreceptors that are sensitive to the "normal" visible light but also UV and polarized light. While it has been documented that stomatopods possess many visual specializations, no one really knows what they are for; this is where my work comes in. It has been assumed that many stomatopod specialized features relate to the complex intra- and interspecific behaviors that these animals employ. If this is true, the varying nature of the light environment in the water necessarily will affect this communication. Recent work has shown that some stomatopods actually can change their retinal filters according to the spectral quality of downwelling light. How this affects the reception and transmission of behavioral signals remains to be determined. This first mission in Aquarius will provide me with an unique opportunity to spend some "quality time" with these interesting animals and document their behaviors in the field as well as collect animals from different depths to transport back to U.M. B. C. for manipulative experiments. When I composed my personal essay for undergrad way back in 1987, I wrote
that the pioneering research of marine biologists was every bit as interesting
as that of astronauts in space and that correspondingly, they should be
called aquanauts. Interesting that 14 years and much work later, I now
am on a mission listed as such. |
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