In late March, Ian (along with several other microbiologists) was contacted by several scientists and resource managers in the Caribbean who were seeing a new mass mortality in Diadema antillarum (the long-spined black urchin). This species plays a very significant role in mediating the balance between macro algae and corals in Caribbean reef ecosystems –… Read More Diadema urchin mass mortality

It’s been a busy start to 2022 – the team making excellent progress on our NSF-funded project to examine how environmental productivity affects flavivirus replication (based largely on the experiment we performed in Sitka last November), concluding work on our global Zostera (seagrass) virome project, but also keeping ears to the rails for new mass… Read More A new mass mortality… and lessons learned!

It’s been a couple of months since last I updated this blog, but this isn’t for lack of things happening… far from it! The team has been extremely busy in the first couple of months of 2022 working to establish new protocols, validate results, and process samples from our field experiment in November 2021. Not… Read More Whirlwind of New Data!

Its hard to believe that it’s already been a year since we were funded by NSF to work on sea cucumber flaviviruses! This time last year, the lab was completely remote and we headed into a new calendar year with the hope that we would be back to lab and field work, somewhat, like in… Read More Holiday Message from the Team Aquatic Virus

Finally, a return to field research! After sitting out 2020 because of risk to our team and communities we would visit from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and thanks to vaccination and better awareness of disease prevention, the team travelled to Sitka, Alaska (Sheet’ká) to work with colleagues at the University of Alaska Southeast. In 2019, Ian… Read More Snowy Sitka Sea Cucumbers

It’s been a couple of months since the last post on the team’s progress. This isn’t because we haven’t been working hard towards the two projects in the lab – far from it – but rather we’ve been inundated with super cool results that have not only given us new insight into the role of… Read More Field season is alive!

Summer is just over a month finished in Ithaca – at least from a climatic standpoint. With only 3 weeks to go before classes begin again for students at Cornell, it feels like summer is fading. But you’d never guess it in our lab, where things have been heating up considerably as we pursue both… Read More Dog days of summer?

Summer’s been exceptionally hot and steamy in Ithaca, which means it’s been a fantastic time to be in the lab with good air conditioning. Our aquarium room is currently at 70oF (tracking Cape Cod water temperatures) – which is a great escape! For the last week, Jay and Ian have been hard at work in… Read More Optodes are really cool

Lots of cool stuff coming out of the lab right now – Summer has already been productive and we’re exploring new approaches to address our hypotheses. Earlier this year, in collaboration with scientists at UGA, UCSC, SFSU, and UNCW, we published the results of our 7-year investigation into the etiology of Sea Star Wasting Disease,… Read More It worked!

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has brought with it a variety of new (and newly-applied) approaches in science and public health. mRNA vaccines have been given to over 160 million US residents – a “technology” (mRNA isn’t exactly technology, but the delivery method is certainly novel) which has not been widely applied in the past. While there… Read More And then we tried a new approach…