Researchers receive $1.4 million from National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation has awarded a team of researchers led by a University of Arkansas professor $1.47 million to study skin microbiomes of marine animals, including sea turtles, manatees, dolphins and whales.

The three-year award is a combination of two separate ones. Principal investigator Andrew Alverson, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Arkansas, will receive $918,053 for his portion. Shady Amin, an associate professor of biology at New York University Abu Dhabi, will serve as principal investigator of the second $552,466 award.

The project aims to document the diatom and bacterial species living on marine megafauna or large animals. The team will enlist partners in Texas, Florida, and Washington to collect more than 100 samples from more than a dozen host species. The team hopes discoveries made through this project will help them grow these diatoms in the lab, creating a permanent living record should their hosts suffer extinction. Findings will be released through scholarly articles, online databases and a monograph.

“It’s really exciting to have a discovery-based project like this one,” Alverson said. “The diatoms on these animals are so highly adapted to their hosts that they cannot survive off of them. Figuring out how these relationships work and what resources the diatoms derive from their host animals is going to show us how quickly these kinds of associations can evolve.”

As part of this project, the work will be accompanied by a three-part documentary created by Alexis Gambis and will be featured at the Imagine Science Film Festival. “Searching for Diatoms” will comprise scientific footage, fieldwork and interviews to tell the story of the evolving diatom.