Mentor: Johana Rotterova, University of Rhode Island
Co-Mentor: Roxanne Beinart, University of Rhode Island

Project Location

University of Rhode Island-Bay Campus

Project Description

Ciliates represent one of the most complex and well studied groups of unicellular eukaryotes – protists. These ubiquitous organisms play a key role in food web systems and biogeochemical cycles on our planet. Ciliates have successfully inhabited a wide variety of environments and have adapted to extreme living conditions, such as deep sea, sulfidic salt-marsh sediments, and globally spreading anoxic zones in the ocean. And yet, we still know only little about the lifestyle of anaerobic ciliates. Their life cycles, physiology, and behavior remain elusive. This project aims to assess the growth rate and tolerance to varying living conditions, such as temperature, of selected anaerobic ciliates (in lineages Metopida and Plagiopylea) isolated in local coastal habitats and long-term cultivated at the Beinart Lab.

The SURF participant will use cultivation and microscopic methods to measure growth curves and perform experimental study of the ciliates’ tolerance and adaptive behavior to varying conditions. In addition, the student will analyze the morphological changes in the ciliate life cycle, while gaining experience on various microscopy, morphology, and cultivation techniques. The student will compare growth curves from a marine and freshwater ciliate that hosts a different set of prokaryotic symbionts, some of which produce methane, a potent green-house gas, or hydrogen sulfate, an important component of key biogeochemical cycles.