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Our new paper on limpets grazing microscopic algae

August 05, 2016

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Lottia limpets sitting on an experimental plate in the intertidal zone.

We recently had a new paper come out in Marine Ecology Progress Series, titled Quantifying the top-down effects of grazers on a rocky shore: selective grazing and the potential for competition (open access link at MEPS)  (permanent doi link).

This project involved putting a series of round aluminum plates out in the high intertidal zone at Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, CA, and allowing natural microalgae to … Continue Reading

Using Arduino tide predictions

September 02, 2012

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In the previous post, I outlined some Arduino code to generate tide height predictions for a NOAA tidal reference station.

Now let’s do something useful with this newfound functionality. In the experiments I run, it’s useful to keep intertidal animals like snails and limpets on a natural tidal cycle. In addition, some animals like high-shore limpets really dislike being continuously submerged, and will crawl up out of the tank and die when they dry out. In this case, I built a “limpet splasher” system that sprays water in the aquarium for a few seconds at a time with pauses in … Continue Reading