Written by: Sean Williamson. February 2022
Various members of the Marine Lab recently attended the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona. This year for SICB2022 there was a mix of in-person and online presentations and workshops. We think the organizers did a fantastic job of ensuring safety during the meeting with regard to COVID-19, especially important given the latest surge in cases from the omicron strain. Over 99% of all 1300+ attendees were vaccinated and everyone was masked whilst indoors. Exceptions to the mask rule were allowed for presenters during their talk. The organizers even made this aspect safer by installing special filtration devices in front of each speaker.
Marine Lab Director and Primary Investigator (PI) Professor Jeanette Wyneken was in attendance, along with Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Sean Williamson (Wyneken Lab) and graduate students Jamie Knaub and Ivan Heerdegen (both Porter / FAB Lab), Ivana Serra, and Samantha Trail (both Wyneken Lab). Incoming Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Lauren Simonitis (Porter / FAB Lab) was also in attendance. It was a great opportunity for the Marine Lab members to get acquainted with Lauren before she arrives to start her NSF-Funded Fellowship at FAU later this year.
There were over 600 talks and 450 posters this year and our lab members had a fantastic week attempting to absorb as much information and novel science as possible. Sean gave a talk in the reproductive physiology session on “Embryonic arrest in turtles and its link to movement-induced mortality of eggs” and also presented a poster entitled “A method for the extraction of early-stage sea turtle embryos.” Even within the same lab group, Ivan, Jamie, and Lauren presented talks in diverse sessions ranging from Fish Swimming to Skeletal Morphology and Mechanics and Sensory Biology. Ivan presented data on “Variations on a theme: Kinematics of Sphyrna lewini (scalloped hammerhead) during volitional swimming and maneuvering”, Jamie’s talk was on “Mineral architecture in thresher shark ( Alopias vulpinus ) vertebrae”, and Lauren’s on “Microstructure of the bonnethead shark ( Sphyrna tiburo ) olfactory rosette.” Ivana Serra presented a poster on her recent work conducted at Yale University using a special piece of equipment. Her poster was titled “Compressive Characteristics of juvenile green turtle ( Chelonia mydas ) shells” and in the Division of Vertebrate Morphology Best Student Poster session. Please feel free to email marinelab@fau.edu if you would like a copy of any of their talks or posters.
Other members of the Marine Lab, including P.I. Dr. Mariane Porter, were able to participate in the SICB+ online events and recordings. The SICB+ content will be available until the end of March 2022 and you can register to view it here .
All in all, it was a fantastic, informative, and rewarding week. We are very grateful to have been able to participate either in person or online. We would also like to thank the various funders that made our contributions and ability to attend possible.
Bring on SICB 2023 in Austin, Texas!
