Meredith Shapiro ’28 intends to major in environmental geology, so she’s getting a jump-start on fieldwork experience this summer, completing a research project with Professor of Earth and Environmental Geosciences Paul Harnik and Professor of Physics Rebecca Metzler. As part of a team of student researchers, Shapiro is examining how climate change and algal blooms impact marine life in coastal regions — through the eyes of a specific mollusc species.
Within the collaborative project, Shapiro belongs to the Nucula team, examining the Atlantic nut clam (Nucula proxima). Other teams, such as the barnacle team and the bryozoa team, research separate organisms with a similar objective: to discern how climate change impacts trait variation.
By considering one species, Shapiro has garnered a detailed understanding of the Atlantic nut clam’s structure. “The clams themselves,” she explains, “are composed of three layers: nacre [also known as mother of pearl], a prismatic layer, and a thin skin-like external layer.” Shapiro’s primary research focus is the nacreous layer, made up of tablets that are each only microns in size.
“The size of these tablets has been found to correlate with environmental factors such as pH and temperature in the regions where these shells were formed,” Shapiro says.
Such regions, including the Gulf of Mexico and coastal areas along Maine, are monitored by state and federal agencies to support ecosystem health. In the sixth week of her project, Shapiro and her peers met with one of these groups — the Maine Department of Marine Resources — for an immersive research excursion.
“We had two days of active fieldwork there, touring nearby labs and collecting samples on a boat,” says Shapiro. On the water, “we dropped a big scientific claw machine down to the bottom of the sea floor to grab sediment, sieving it to remove any excess.”
While many of the specimens they gathered were left for the benefit of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, they brought home samples to analyze and compare to materials gathered by vlog students in past years, sourced primarily from the Gulf of Mexico.
From here, Shapiro and peers will continue to analyze samples from coastal Maine and Mexico to draw greater observations about the Atlantic nut clam species and assess their hypothesis: whether the nacreous layer becomes thicker as coastal waters get warmer.
“I am proud to be doing this research,” says Shapiro. “We hope that, from it, we can better understand the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems.”