In the last two years, I've graduated from Clemson, moved back west, spent a year at home and am now about to pursue a graduate degree at Oregon State University with zoology (unspecified for now because while I was accepted as a masters student, I am leaning strongly towards switching to the PhD program. A huge helping of impostor syndrome is keeping me from making that decision until after the first quarter, however).
It's funny, because I considered Oregon State when looking for undergrad schools partly because of the Zoology department. High school me wasn't able to articulate that zoology isn't about zoos, though, so when I applied I did so as a pre-bioengineering, hah. That would've been a very different path for sure.
But enough housekeeping! Let's dig into some science.
International Cephalopod Awareness Days are coming up in a couple weeks, and while the tumblr doesn't look like it's been updated since last year, I've been looking forward to this more than Shark Week. While bobtail squid would probably be more of a 10-10 post, they're in a completely different order than typical squid (Sepiolida vs. Teuthida)
Besides being adorable, they're also symbionts with bioluminescent bacteria.
There's actually several labs out there working with Euprymna scolopes and Vibrio fisheri interactions- one in microbiology at UGA has done some sequencing and a University of Wisconsin-Madison lab has interesting ideas about the bacteria as an influence on the squid's circadian clock, which has wonderfully interesting applications for microbiome research.
Actually, symbiosis in general is pretty cool. :-)
