Project Mentor: Professor Darrin Schultz, Biological Sciences
2027 Impact Fellows:
Project Description:
The comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi lives alongside its predators in estuaries on the Atlantic coast of the Americas. Ships’ ballast water has carried it to seas across Europe and western Asia. It took over the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and fish catches there plummeted. To learn what makes the difference, student teams will survey comb jellies, their predators, and water conditions of Mnemiopsis' habitats. In the lab, they will test how salinity and temperature limit reproduction and sequence animal's genomes to look for genetic changes that suit Mnemiopsis to their new seas. The team will build an open genomic database and a model that predicts which seas are at risk.