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EFB Student’s Research Poster Receives Top Honors
ESF Senior Emily Hall received the award for the best poster for the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the National Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Hall, an environmental and forest biology major and member of the ESF Honors Program, participated in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at the College of Charleston in the summer of 2014. The program gives undergraduates real-world and hands-on experience in scientific research and supports active research participation by students in any of the areas of research funded by the NSF.
Hall's poster presented her work on, "A Test of Genetic Variation for Resistance to Effects of Seawater Acidification on the Skeletal Development of Sea Urchin Larvae." Her poster was chosen for the honor from among scores of posters presented by undergraduates, graduate students and professors.
Hall studied how marine organisms might respond to a more acidic ocean. Ocean acidification, considered "the other CO2 problem" in addition to climate change, is caused when the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere. That absorbed carbon dioxide reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, making the ocean more acidic.