Nordic Notions: Update (part 2)

Hi again! Other than talks I got to present a wonderfully prepared poster at IPY. Luckily I got to present on the first day when conference attendance was presumably the highest. My poster presentation went fairly well. Our poster centered around the amount of carbonate that the Antarctic scallop Adamussium colbecki produces.

After tucking my shirt back in, the poster session began. At first it was a little awkward because no one really came by to talk to me. Then they brought out wine and people seemed a little more eager to come chat. The first person who came by was curious about nutrient uptake by the scallops and whether we ever considered doing some sort of nutrient analysis. another individual came by a few moments later and the three of us got into a really fun conversation about size class distribution of A. colbecki. I was told of a study where to investigators found plenty of small juvenile and large adult A. colbecki but very few intermediate sized scallops. The authors found that because the juveniles attach to adults via byssal threads they were protected from predators. The adult A. colbecki were safe from predators simply because they were too big for fish predators. So, the intermediate sized scallops were preferentially preyed upon and subsequently their numbers were relatively lower. Kinda neat but seems to omit other predator groups aside from fish.

Many people who came by our poster were quite fascinated with a photo of an ice wall along which the scallops were tucked right up to. One thing about the poster at this particular meeting was that not too many invertebrate biologists were present. This resulted in several questions about scallops themselves and their biology and ecology. This was fun to me because I got to describe a really cool organism and some of its associated fauna. I learned a lot about how to make a poster from this experience and next time I will make a poster instead of a talk.

IPY 2010 was a fascinating meeting because I was able to see first hand the infancy that polar science was still going through. I cannot recall another meeting where most every presentation was a unique experience. Every talk, every poster was a completely different aspect of polar science. Many of the studies presented only preliminary data and there was such a wide swathe of topics that I think any individual could find something of interest. Here are some pictures of the beautiful Oslo area: