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The Identification in Phytoplankton Community Structures Richness and Abundance in Hilo Bay

Undergraduate #262
Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Ecology

Latia Jackson - Virginia State University
Co-Author(s): Joseph Teamer, University, Virginia, Petersburg



In Hilo Hawaii, the ‘Break wall’ is used as a man-made barrier to protect the sensitive ecosystem of Hilo Bay. It has been studied that the ‘Break wall’ disrupts the natural circulation of water within Hilo Bay. The environmental factors such as season, temperature, and dissolved oxygen affect the species richness, abundance and structure in the phytoplankton community. The hypothesis of this study is to see if there is a difference in the phytoplankton community, structure, abundance, and richness in different areas of Hilo Bay. As an intern in the NSF HBCU Supplement at the University of Hawaii at Hilo (UHH), I collected water samples on the Four High Winds (UHH Marine Science vessel) on weekly basis and analyzed in the Marine Science laboratory. The water samples were collected at: (i) Wailuku River mouth, which is known for turbid waters, (ii) ‘sweet spot’ which is speculated to have high counts of phytoplankton, and (iii) off shore. The phytoplankton were preserved in a 250 ml bottles with Lugol’s solution. A portion of water sample was reserved for inverted light microscopy to count for species abundance and richness. This sample was filtrated through the Mani-fold filtration system to capture phytoplankton onto the stub. After filtration, the stub was placed in the Labconco Lyophilizer with dry ice overnight to freeze and process the phytoplankton to the stub. The following day, the freeze dried samples were mounted on a 15 millimeter aluminum stub with double sided carbon sticky tape. To observe the phytoplankton under the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), the sample was coated with gold. Then a silver paste was placed along the edge of the stub to make a connection from the electron beam to the stub holder. The sample was then mounted carefully into the SEM. After adjusting some of aspects of the SEM such as the probe current and voltage, the phytoplankton were imaged by Hitachi S-3400 II SEM. The Chlorophyll A, salinity and distance were measured between each transect. The data was statistically analyzed by using the software package statistical analysis (SPSS) to determine the differences in the study sites. ArcGIS Garmin Montana 600, Google Earth were used to map, create layers and geographical location of each sampling site. Our results show that there is an F value of 28.89 showing the differences in the phytoplankton community in correlation with the study sites. Further studies are required to identify phytoplankton species precisely.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): This work was supported in part by the HBCU-UP of the National Science Foundation under NSF Cooperative Agreement No. HRD-1036286. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation. The author acknowledges Jason Adolf at UHH for research in research, Xianfa Xie for coordinating the summer internship, and Shobha Sriharan for serving as faculty advisor. The author acknowledges Dr. Jason Adolf at UHH for research in research, Dr.Xianfa Xie for coordinating the summer internship, and Dr. Shobha Sriharan for serving as faculty advisor.

Faculty Advisor: Shobha Sriharan, ssriharan@vsu.edu

Role: In the UHH Marine Science lab, I collected and analyzed water samples with fellow researchers on the Four High Winds (UHH Marine Science vessel) on weekly basis to be analyzed. I prepared the samples for the Hitachi S-3400 II Scanning Electron Microscope. I captured images and identified genera of phytoplankton. I tested Chlorophyll A, salinity and measured the distance between each transect using Google Earth. I Used ArcGIS Garmin Montana 600, Google Earth were used to map, create layers and geographically locate of each sampling site.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DUE-1930047. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.

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