Collaboration with CORE education & research institute
I’m very excited to announce that next week I will be heading to Eleuthera, the Bahamas, for a field expedition. We have come in contact with CORE institute (www.coresciences.org), a fellow partner of the Thalassia Experimental Network, and we will set up additional experiments investigating the impact of turtle grazing on seagrass resilience. Thanks to the Alberta Mennega stichting for funding this field trip, which will provide valuable insights into marine plant-herbivore dynamics.
Updates will follow!
Video still by Owen O’Shea
Fieldtrip September 2018
This September, we (Marjolijn, me and masterstudent Mark) went to Bonaire for three weeks of fieldwork. During this time, we monitored our experiment that is part of the Thalassia Experimental Network (together with Justin Campbell of the Smithsonian Institute). We performed productivity measurements and harvested several shoots per plot for morphological analysis.
Additionally, we set up a large number of new plots to investigate effects of nutrient addition and turtle grazing on seagrass resilience and ecosystem services. This research will provide new insights in invasive species mechanisms and differences in ecosystem services provided between seagrass species. This project will provide nice opportunities for several masterstudents to conduct their internship in the Caribbean.
Special thanks to Budget car rental Bonaire for supporting our fieldtrip!
