Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Ecology
Session: 1
Room: Senate
Tameka Taylor - Morgan State University
Co-Author(s): Kayla M. McVey, York College of Pennsylvania, York, PennsylvaniaChunlei Fan, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland
Living shorelines are critical to increasing the resilience of our nation to the impacts of coastalfloods, hurricanes, and climate changes. However, the efforts to develop sustainable and broadlyapplicable living shoreline techniques using restored oyster reefs are often hindered by the lowsalinity condition in estuarine ecosystems. This research aims to evaluate the suitability of a lowsalinity tolerance eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica line in living shoreline applications. Thelarval survival and settlement rates of low salinity tolerance (LST) and native wild (WMD)oyster lines were examined at two salinity levels (low salinity ~9 ppt, and high salinity ~15ppt)over a 10-week period during the summer of 2022. The research was conducted at the oysterhatchery of Morgan State University Patuxent Aquatic and Environmental Research Laboratory(PEARL). Our results suggest that larval survival rates varied substantially over the two weeksperiod after spawning. However, the LST larvae showed significantly higher survival rate thanWMD line at low salinity treatment between 7 to 9 days after spawning. Furthermore, the initiallarval settlement rates of these two oyster lines were not significantly different at these twosalinity levels. The results have implications for understanding the biology of C. virginica in lowsalinity regions, and could be used to support management tools such as oyster restoration andliving shoreline applications. This project also provided education and research opportunities tothe faculty and students at Morgan State University.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This research was performed under an appointment to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology (S&T) Directorate Office of University Programs Summer Research Team Program for Minority Serving Institutions, administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) through an interagency agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DHS. ORISE is managed by ORAU under DOE contract number DE-SC0014664.
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Chunlei Fan, chunlei.fan@morgan.edu
Role: Served as the Research Assistant in the laboratory experimentation, laboratory analysis, sampling, evaluations and data analysis.