Courses: Marine Ecology

I taught Marine Ecology in the summer of 2008 and again in the summer of 2009.  An advantage of the summer course is that the weather is exceptionally nice in Long Island at that time.  Flax Pond is a beautiful salt marsh, only a short trip from the Stony Brook campus.  I used this as an opportunity to for students to gain a good experience in the salt marsh.  In the first week of class, we scheduled two trips to Flax Pond Salt Marsh.  This way we could work it into the schedules of the majority of the class.

In the week before the trip we had an in depth discussion of salt marsh ecology in general and the specifics of Flax Pond.  Topics included:

• salt marsh zonation and the distribution of plants and animals over the landscape 
• the physical and chemical properties of the sediments and the "redox potential discontinuity"
• the distribution and reproductive behavior of the marsh's two fiddler crab species
• how biological interactions affect the distribution of the coffee bean snail
• the formation of salt pans and their use by juvenile horseshoe crabs
• distribution of organisms in the rocky intertidal at the inlet and non-random survival of barnacle spat
• organisms of special concern, like osprey and diamondback terrapins

The students prepared (variably) for the muddy conditions and armed with their new knowledge of marsh activities, we explored the topics in person.

Field trip students

Students search the high marsh for coffee bean snails.

Students showing their coffee bean snails, Melampus bidentatus. 

I show the major claw of a fiddler crap, Uca pugilator

 

Droving fiddler crabs.

2005 class (from the archives!)

Smelling the Hydrogen Sulfide of the RPD!

Observing the expanses of Flax Pond