Environmental Change Research Facility

With funding from an NSF Improvements in Facilities, Communications, and Equipment at Biological Field Stations and Marine Laboratories (FSML) grant, BIOS's infrastructure now includes an Environmental Change Research Facility. Designed to test the effects of multiple anthropogenic stressors on the marine environment, such as temperature, nutrients, CO2, and low O2, the facility includes two environmental chambers with flow-through seawater, a CO2 exposure facility, and an inverted microscope equipped with DIC optics, epifluoresence, and CellSens imaging software.

The environmental chambers have temperature control for a range of 5-30 +/- 0.5°C, a programmable thermostat and lights, and access to flow-through seawater, which can be controlled by standalone chiller units for temperature pre-equilibration. Combined these allow for multiple flow-through environments free of the daily fluctuations in external temperature. These chambers are ideal for investigations into the interactive effects of temperature and other stressors, while also providing a temperature-controlled environment for process studies of basic organismal function.

More information about the inverted microscope can be found on the Micropscopy and Image Analysis Facility page.

Current research being conducted in the BIOS ECRF includes this investigation into the physics and ecology of sea butterflies.