{"id":6448,"date":"2016-09-01T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T14:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogschapman.wpenginepowered.com\/scst\/2016\/09\/01\/getting-a-taste-of-what-it-means-to-be-a-professional-ecologist\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T23:23:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T23:23:29","slug":"getting-a-taste-of-what-it-means-to-be-a-professional-ecologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/scst\/2016\/09\/01\/getting-a-taste-of-what-it-means-to-be-a-professional-ecologist\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting a Taste of What it Means to be a Professional Ecologist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"An
An Aplysia inking for self-defense.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This summer, I went on a fantastic adventure. I adventured to a faraway land, where the natives speak in a foreign tongue, the drivers do not understand the concept of yielding at a roundabout, and June is smack in the middle of the rainy season. I traveled, with my professor, Dr. William Wright, to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute outside of Panama City, Panama.<\/p>\n

Learning about Learning<\/h3>\n

Why did we journey to this new environment?<\/p>\n

A research project that has been bouncing around in Dr. Wright\u2019s lab for years had recently landed on my plate. We are investigating a peculiar species of sea hare, Dolabrifera dolabrifera<\/em>, who have mysteriously lost the otherwise ubiquitous ability to learn from a painful experience. Other species of sea hares will increase their defensive withdrawal reflexes in the minutes, hours and even days following a painful episode, but not our Dolabrifera.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dolabrifera
Dolabrifera grazing on the floor of a tide pool<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why do sea hares need to learn from a noxious stimuli? Is it important to their survival? We think it must help sea hares survive, because all but Dolabrifera<\/em> can do it. Then how in the world might losing this ability to learn be adaptive? How did Dolabrifera <\/em>evolve away the ability to learn.<\/p>\n

Most people, myself included, think that learning is a great thing to do. Learning makes us better equipped to handle the uncertain situations of the future. Presumably, sea hares work the same way. It is our current belief that these creatures increase their defensive withdrawal after painful experiences so that next time they are harmed, they can better protect themselves and nurse their injuries.<\/p>\n

Given that belief, Dolabrifera<\/em> are the exception to the rule. They don\u2019t learn from predator attacks, or other painful experiences like getting hit by waves or rocks in the rough intertidal, so Dr. Wright and I went to Panama to figure out how they can possibly survive in the dangerous intertidal region of the beach without this seemingly important learning pathway.<\/p>\n

A Flurry of Hypotheses in Panama<\/h3>\n

Dr. Wright and I arrived in Panama on the night of June 19th<\/sup>, got all squared away in our hotel, called The Beach House,<\/em> got a nice dinner of corvina and arroz con coco (the local fish and coconut rice) at Mi Ranchito<\/em> (which quickly became our favorite restaurant), and went to bed, eager to start working the next day.<\/p>\n

Panama began as a flurry of creating hypotheses, drawing up creative means of testing them, and working for hours in the scorching sun, pouring rain, and even thunder at all hours of day and night in the field to record data. Our initial observations of Dolabrifera<\/em> showed that they only emerge from crevices and under boulders during daytime low tide. We hypothesized that Dolabrifera <\/em>don\u2019t need to learn because they simply hide from danger; therefore, both nighttime and high tides must be too dangerous for them because predators are on the prowl and waves can damage the Dolabrifera<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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