This course undertakes four field trips to Seahorse Key during the Fall term and three field trips during the Spring term. Students are given a brief orientation that includes historical information and natural history of the area. Field activities include dredging, plankton tows, and intertidal work to illustrate the natural habitats and lives of animals that are studied previously in the laboratory. Each Fall semester the Marine Laboratory facilities might be used for research projects by graduate students whose projects in the Florida Keys were cancelled because of poor weather conditions. This past fall three such projects were done under these circumstances.
Nematodes are the second most prevalent biotic fauna in our oceans.
This course schedules a field trip to Seahorse Key for purpose of collecting and identifying nematode specimens. Representative nematodes are processed for permanent preservation on slides. This course is offered on Saturdays of the last half of the Fall semester. Students sample the marine flora in the grass flats adjacent to Seahorse Key, the shallow water at the mouth of Crystal River, and many sites in the Florida Keys. Collected specimens are identified, mounted on herbarium paper, and labeled.