Current lab members
College of Charleston undergraduate and graduate students assisting with field work in Charleston Harbor (from left: Hunt Jones, Josie Shostak, Kate Davis, Jake Kuenzli, and Alex Parry)
Alex Parry is a MS student in the Graduate Program in Marine Biology at Grice Marine Lab. Alex has diverse research interests, but he is using stable isotope analyses and flow cytometry to study heterotrophic feeding in Caribbean sponges for his MS thesis
Hunt Jones is a MS student in the Graduate Program in Marine Biology at Grice Marine Lab. Hunt studies nutrient assimilation and recycling in Caribbean sponges using a combination of stable isotope analyses, scanning electron microscopy, and nanoSIMS.
Previous lab members
Jake Kuenzli was an REU student working with me and Dr. Peter Lee at Hollings Marine Lab. Jake is studying how a shift from coral reefs to “sponge reefs” will impact volatile organic compound cycling and release
College of Charleston undergraduate student Mylene Gonzales (left) put out settlement tiles in Charleston Harbor to measure recruitment and succession in benthic communities as part of her Bachelor’s Essay for the Honors College. Her work was assisted by MS student Alex Parry
College of Charleston students (from right) Bailey Fallon, Samantha Czwalina, and Abby Stephens travelled with our research team to Bocas del Toro, Panama in 2019. In addition to assisting with our main research project, they carried out their own independent research. Bailey studied microplastics in sponges (publication here), Abby found and isolated larvae from adult sponges, and Samantha quantified the release of cellular detritus from sponges.
Josie Shostak is an undergraduate at the College of Charleston. Josie is leading our research on freshwater sponges in South Carolina.
Kate Davis is an undergraduate at the College of Charleston conducting a senior research project aimed at characterizing macroinvertebrate communities within Caribbean sponges.
Jake Kuenzli taking sponge samples for future metabolomics work
College of Charleston students (from right) Bailey Fallon, Abby Stephens, and Samantha Czwalina seeing their first sloth in Bocas del Toro, Panama
Samantha Czwalina filtering water to measure cellular detritus release from Caribbean sponges