Coastal Disease Ecology Intern

Start Date: September 15, 2024

Length: 20 weeks

Schedule: Full-time, 40 hours/week. 

Stipend: $650/week + on-campus housing 

Location: This position is in collaboration with the Coastal Disease Ecology at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) led by Dr. Katrina Lohan. This project is in collaboration with Dr. Matthew Ogburn of the Fisheries Conservation Lab and Dr. Emmett Duffy of the Smithsonian MarineGEO Network. The primary location for conducting the research will be at SERC in Edgewater, Maryland, which is a research center of the Smithsonian Institution, located on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, approximately 10 miles south of Annapolis. The 2,650-acre SERC campus contains a laboratory and office complex, as well as educational and waterfront facilities. 

Description: Although sequestration of blue carbon dominates discussions of wetland ecosystem services, several other services provided by seagrasses (“co-benefits”) are likely to prove equally or more valuable to humanity but remain poorly studied. Measuring the portfolio of seagrass ecosystem services together will address the key question of whether services are synergistic or involve trade-offs, with quite different implications for management and nature-based solutions. We will employ modern genomic tools in an innovative way to characterize seagrass support for fisheries species, coastal protection, and pathogen and parasite purging from coastal waters. The proposed research will allow a first integrated assessment of these services for a seagrass ecosystem, targeting the greater Chesapeake Bay region as the model, which we hope to extend globally with external funding. 

Learning objectives:

The intern will learn from the PI, graduate students, professional technicians, and collaborators:

- molecular genetic lab techniques, including DNA extraction, PCR, and metabarcode library preparation

- principles of environmental DNA (eDNA) and dietary DNA (dDNA), from sample collection to processing and the limitations of these approaches

- general laboratory best practices, such as sample labeling and curation