Seaweed Evolution Seminar

Patrick Martone from the University of British Columbia. | Photo Courtesy of Hakai Institute

Researchers at the University of British Columbia were curious about how the shape of seaweed affects the drag it experiences as they attempted to understand "how anything can survive in these really stressful habitats, because they're experiencing these forces every, say, 11 to 20 seconds," Patrick Martone, an associate botany department professor, said in an interview.

"Mobile animals can hide. They can run away when the storms hit. They can hide in cracks or crevices or at least hunker down and hold on tightly."

Not seaweed, which clings to rocks with root-like appendages called holdfasts, which squeeze into small spaces, and a natural adhesive.

But when it came time to recreate this in a UBC lab, the team decided to make seaweed on campus from latex that they cut into seaweed-like shapes with a laser beam. The imitation stuff worked. (From The Globe And Mail).

To learn more about this research, the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology is hosting a talk by Patrick Matrone as part of their seminar series. The lecture is free to the public, and everyone is welcome.

Please note that this partiulcar talk will take place at the OIMB Dining Hall due to construction.