Research Opportunities

With faculty guidance, many students develop research projects during the semester or summer, both on campus and in field locations. Some of these projects may be funded by the Faculty Research Fund Board or the Biology Department with either part-time semester grants or full-time summer research fellowships. Students who complete research projects regularly publish papers in peer-reviewed journals and present their work at academic conferences such as the Ohio Academy of Sciences, the National Conference for Undergraduate Research, and the Benthic Ecology Meetings.

Independent Research Projects

• Assessing the potential impacts of coastal development on the grass shrimp, Palaemonetes pugio
• Ecological niche separation in two tropical nerite species
• Geographic variation in response of fiddler crabs to three hexose sugars
• Using molecular tools to identify species of fiddler crab larvae in a North Carolina estuary
• A comparison of sea cucumber population dynamics in protected and unprotected habitats near Chumbe Island, Zanzibar, Tanzania
• Herding limits water loss in the sand fiddler crab, Uca pugilator
• Fiddler crab feeding causes vertical migration in meiofauna
• Role of piling in the tricolored hermit crab
• Spatial and predation ecology of whelks in a shallow embayment in the Rachel Carson Reserve, Beaufort,
  North Carolina
• Induction of shell-switching behavior in the tricolor hermit crab by chemical odors
• Survey of trash accumulation and comparison of two beaches on San Salvador, The Bahamas

Summer Internships
Each summer several students receive internship or research funding to study at marine laboratories or field
stations around the country or abroad. Some of these opportunities include a stipend, travel funds and a budget for supplies. Recently, students have completed internships at the following institutions:

• Dauphin Island Sea Laboratory, Alabama
• Duke University Marine Laboratory, North Carolina
• Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida
• Keck Geology Consortium, SE Australia
• Newport Aquarium, Newport, Kentucky
• NOAA Division of Protected Resources, Massachusetts
• Theater of the Sea, Islamorada, Florida
• University of Maine, Darling Marine Center
• University of Maryland, Horn Point Environmental Laboratory