Over the weekend, our infected sea stars survived, as did all our Alaskan stars. So far so good! Today we made the decision to proceed with the challenge trials – this is where we take viruses out of the Seattle Aquarium stars and then inject them into the Alaskan animals to see how they respond. Finally, some actual experiments!

The first step was to adjust the experimental tanks to the same salinity and nutrient concentrations, before transferring our Alaskan Evasterias. Vital data on animal size and weight were taken, along with samples to determine their ambient micro biome, coelomocyte concentration, and samples for molecular work (transcriptomics, SSaDV prevalence, bacterial abundance, virioplankton abundance, etc). We’ve learned from experience that the coelomocytes (kind of like blood cells) behave somewhat differently from surface tissues, so we collected some tube feet as well. We’ve also noted in previous work that the virus appears in…