Sutherland Lab

Happy #WorldOceansDay from two weird and wonderful marine creatures: a Venus's Girdle #ctenophore and a #squid. Observed while #blackwaterdiving off the coast of Kona, HI, in May 2025.

From November 2024 to April 2025, we welcomed Guilherme von Montfort, a visiting PhD researcher from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande in Brazil to study these fascinating creatures. His work examines the prey capture mechanisms and ecological impact of small jellyfish through video analysis.

Did you know jellyfish are some of the ocean's oldest hunters?
These videos show Liriope tetraphylla - a globally distributed hydrozoan jellyfish - capturing a copepod (Acartia tonsa). These small predators have perfected their hunting strategy over millions of years.

This little spaceship is a baby sand dollar.
It catches particles of food using cilia (tiny hairs). By feeding fluorescent food particles, we're studying which particles it can and cannot catch, which could have implications for the microbes and phytoplankton in the ocean.

ECR Spotlight – Alejandro Damian-Serrano ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career res...

And read more about @planktomancer.bsky.social career here:
doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

In linear chains, individuals are lined up one behind the other so that the frontal area of the colony stays the same no matter how many individuals there are. This means that larger colonies get more propulsion without increasing their drag. This makes linear colonies the fastest salp shape!

In the transversal chain colony shape, individuals are lined up side-by-side so the frontal area increases with more individuals (moving like a chain of people holding hands and walking forward.) The large frontal area makes transversal salp colonies fairly slow swimmers.

Similar to whorls, cluster colonies also have individuals perpendicular to the colony overall and get “wider” with more individuals. But in clusters, the individuals are held apart from each other by long peduncles. Despite some similarities with whorls, this shape is a surprisingly fast swimmer.

In whorl shaped colonies, the individuals are oriented perpendicular to the colony overall, and colonies with more individuals have a larger frontal area (they are “wider”). This shape has the slowest swimming speed, though the speed increases with a larger number of individuals propelling it along.

Colonial architecture modulates the speed and efficiency of multi-jet swimming in salp colonies Summary: Linear arrangements in multi-jet propelled marine colonial invertebrates are faster than less streamlined architectures without incurring higher costs of transport, offering insights for bioi...

#Salps have a solitary and colonial phase in their lives, and the colonies of different species come in a variety of shapes. A new study led by @planktomancer.bsky.social uses videos of salps to examine the swimming of different colony shapes.
Check it out here:
doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Some marine animals eat tiny particles by filtering them out of the water. Environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) allowed for a close-up look at some of the particles ingested by salps, pyrosomes, doliolids, and other #zooplankton. Read more here: doi.org/10.1007/s002... (March 2025)

a diagram showing the possible fates of particles caught in the appendicularian's house

a microscope image of an appendicularian body and house on a black background with glowing green artificial food particles

Appendicularians are small tadpole-shaped marine animals that catch food particles in their mucus mesh “house”. The charge of particles’ surfaces affects whether they are ingested into the appendicularian’s gut or retained in the house - read more here: doi.org/10.1002/lno.... (Feb 2025)

Sure, extending its tentacles will expose this hydroid to the many dangers of life.
But it will also open it up to life's many joys and opportunities, such as food drifting by!
Many jellyfish in the class Hydrozoa have a "hydroid" life stage in addition to the jellyfish "medusa" stage. (Feb 2025)

small transparent jellyfish with white gonads individually numbered in a petri dish on a black background

small transparent jellyfish with white gonads individually numbered in a petri dish on a black background

small transparent jellyfish with white gonads individually numbered in a petri dish on a black background

600+ jellies and 2000+ gonads later...
Over the past year, undergrad researcher Will Bird has been measuring body size and gonad size (the four white squiggles) in hundreds of photographs of the small but abundant hydromedusa Clytia gregaria. (Jan 2025)

Close-up on an Aequorea victoria hydromedusa, collected as it swam by the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (November 2024)

Often, to study gelatinous zooplankton we venture out to the ocean to meet them where they live. But for a closer look, sometimes we bring them into the lab. In summer 2024, PhD candidate Farzana Yesmin investigated the growth of the hydromedusa Clytia gregaria by photographing them as they grew.

A black and white photo of people running on a road. The people have colorful areas around them indicating their motion

In·flu·ence, a short film co-directed by Kelly Sutherland and Evan Luchkow, screened at the Planet in Focus film festival in Toronto in October 2024!
The film repurposed fluid dynamics tools to examine the interactions between humans and the world around us.

Many translucent chaetognath worms individually numbered against a black background

During spring term 2024, undergrad researchers Audrey Lillie, Will Bird, and Ezra Bergson-Michelson studied the physiology of chaetognaths (pictured), hydromedusae, and salps by measuring anatomy of individual organisms in photos.

The chain-forming salp, Iasis cylindrica, swims in helices! Using blue-water SCUBA diving and 3D videography we described the mechanics of this movement which is rarely studied in organisms larger than 1cm. Read more here: doi.org/10.1126/scia... (May 2024)
Funded by @moorefound.bsky.social

a round glowing green rotifer with bright green dots in it on a black background

two roundish glowing green rotifers with bright green dots in them on a black background

a rotifer with green glowing dots in it on a brown background

a translucent rotifer on a gray background

Undergrad researcher Hannah Rosenfeld investigated feeding selectivity among animals that employ various suspension-feeding mechanisms to collect particles from the water. (Rotifers use cilia to make a vortex which draws food particles toward their mouth.) (March 2024)

Peristaltic pumps are common in industrial and even in everyday settings. A cosmopolitan marine organism (the appendicularian, Oikopleura dioica), uses a novel peristaltic pump based on a tail that undulates inside a tightly fitting chamber. Nov. 2023 paper: doi.org/10.1098/rsif...

Introducing a contender for Most Elegant Animal in the Ocean: the Appendicularian! In Oct. 2023, Terra Hiebert and collaborators Anne Thompson and Carey Sweeney @bluewaterlab.bsky.social went to the @msarscentre.bsky.social in Bergen, Norway to study appendicularian feeding selectivity.

This #ctenophore Lampea lactea is specialized in eating salps. This adult individual is attempting to ingest a solitary Cyclosalpa sewelli salp off the coast of Hawaii. Video by Brad Gemmell. (July 2023)

A scientist smiles while looking into a tray of brownish smushed zooplankton

two scientists wearing hardhats smile while one holds on to a cable

a scientist smiles while holding up a large transparent salp

a scientists smiles while stepping over a large net with the help of another scientist

While working and living at sea for weeks at a time can be tough, there is always time for smiles, laughter, and learning. Photos of smiling scientists at sea by #scicomm intern Carmen Sanchez-Reddick (March 2023)

Check out our March 2023 paper in @nature.com Scientific Reports quantifying the feeding behavior and trophic impact of #ctenophore Ocyropsis using high-resolution imaging methods. Unlike other ctenophores, Ocyropsis uses muscular lobes and a prehensile mouth to capture prey. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

a large orange jellyfish flattened in a glass tray

many small transparent jellyfish in a glass tray

small transparent many-legged centipede-like animals in a petri dish

many purplish round animals in a glass tray

Some of the gelatinous #zooplankton we collected off the Oregon coast: a large Pacific sea nettle jellyfish , small hydromedusa jellyfish Clytia and Eutonina, Tomopteris polychaete worms, and thousands of doliolids. Photos by #scicomm intern Carmen Sanchez-Reddick (Feb 2023)

two scientists with life jackets and hard hats stand at the side of a boat holding a cone shaped net between them

a scientist in a black jacket pours a transparent box of brown water containing zooplankton into a tray

three scientists peer into trays and pick things out with forceps

a scientists examines a petri plate of zooplankton under a camera

Working with #zooplankton aboard the Feb. 2023 research cruise: catching zooplankton in a net, sorting zooplankton in trays by hand, and finally photographing individual organisms for measurements later on. Photos by #scicomm intern Carmen Sanchez-Reddick

A scientist in a jacket and baseball cap peers into a tray of zooplankton

Two musicians wearing black jackets and headphones sit in front of a computer

Scientists and artists smile for the camera outside aboard the research cruise

UO Professor Danny Pimentel and musician Sirintip Phasuk joined us on the research cruise. Danny was developing #AR and #VR experiences to bring ocean research to new audiences, and
#artistatsea Sirintip created music based on #zooplankton and ocean data.

A scientist looks out to sea over the side of a boat in anticipation of the expedition ahead

The side of the white and blue research vessel R/V Langseth

Many scientists smile for the camera aboard R/V Langseth

In July 2023, the Sutherland Lab set out on R/V Langseth with @osuplanktonlab.bsky.social and @bluewaterlab.bsky.social to sample along the Oregon coast for gelatinous #zooplankton. To learn more, check out #scicomm intern Carmen Sanchez-Reddick's story and photos: www.sutherlandlab.org/spectra

A siphonophore which looks like white transparent bubbles in two rows with a long frilly tail trailing out one end

Physonect #siphonophores like Nanomia bijuga produce multiple jets for propulsion, employing distinct swimming behaviors such as pulsating in sequence and simultaneous pulsation. In this paper, we used experiments and modeling to compare swimming modes. (Jan 2023) doi.org/10.1073/pnas...