This research project, started in October 2012, will focus on biogeography and succession of microbial communities in aquariums. As with our previous project on genome sequencing, the goal is to provide a substantial research experience to undergrads while examining the microbiology of the built environment.
We will be studying a series of aquariums here at the UC Davis campus, focusing in particular on a couple of brand-new coral ponds that are being established. We are taking baseline microbial and water chemistry data and then will examine changes through a series of perturbations to the system (addition of microbes from an established tank, addition of corals, addition of sea rocks, addition of invertebrates, and finally use of the ponds for an intro bio lab). Right now the focus is on 16S bacterial sequencing but we may expand this to include archaea, 18S, and metagenomics.
The project is being managed by David Coil with help from Jenna Lang and Mathew Haggerty (visiting graduate student from San Diego State). Check out our project blog here.
Undergraduates:
Sabreen Aulakh
Alex Alexiev
Akshay Sethi
Andrew Shaver
Jennifer Flanagan
Lakshmi Bharadwaj
High School:
Kevin Yang (in collaboration with Kenneth Kubo at American River College)
iam interested in knowing more about microbes in fresh water aquarium,can u please su gest me some of the stains used to identify bacteria and growthmedia other than nutrient agar in culturing bacteria.ur valuable informations will be verymuch useful for me. Thankq with regards sheema