Congratulations to Lexy Reinhardt, three times over: she won the Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award during convocation ack in May, she published the first article from her thesis in the Journal of Experimental Biology, and snagged the cover art work for the journal issue as well, along with an Early Career Research Spotlight write-up.

Here’s what I had to say about the significance of Lexy’s thesis for the award nomination committee:

Reinhardt studied movement patterns relative to chemical and flow cues in the sea slug Hermissenda crassicornis.  Reinhardt gathered data over 5 weeks using submersible video, recording 570 hours of video, with 311 slugs in the recordings.  At the same time, she recorded locations of their prey and  used current meters to record the water movement over the animals as they crawled.  This combination allowed her to examine both major sensory cues the animals use to find food: water flow and chemical cues.   The currents in their habitat are complex, involving longer term fluctuations in speed and direction from tidal flow and oscillatory flow generate by open ocean surge.  Despite this complexity, Reinhardt’s data revealed the animals were using several strategies when responding to chemical cues in prey.  When flow was less variable, they followed the flow that carried the cues.  When flow was more variable, they seem to follow just chemical gradients, possibly generated by mixing that arises from the more variable flow. 

The significance of this work lies in where it was collected. To our knowledge, this study is the only study to ever examine how any animal navigates through wave-affected subtidal environments using data collected in the field.  In doing so, it revealed unexpected complexity in the strategies the animals appear to use (we expected higher flow variability to simply impeded navigation, not trigger a switch). Thus, the work extends our understanding of how gastropods (slugs and snails) move through the various environments they live, and extends our understanding (and the methods required to achieve that understanding) in wave-affected nearshore habitats.  These holds a wide diversity of animals world wide, and Reinhardt’s thesis is pioneering the study of navigation in this complicated flow environment.

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Reinhardt, A.M.D., and Wyeth, R.C. 2026. Navigational behaviour of the sea slug hermissenda crassicornis in natural wave-affected flow conditions. J. Exp. Biol. 229(18): jeb252174. doi:10.1242/jeb.252174.

Congratulations to Anand Lopez, ex-post-doc co-supervised with Shegufa Shetranjiwalla, who published this review of how sugar polymers can influence the performance coatings used to stop or reduce marine biofouling.

A number of experiments with natural polysaccharide-based coatings have have explored how they can enhance fouling-release or antifouling properties. In this review, polysaccharide chemical properties are linked to coatings performance properties, alongside the challenges that arise from silt and salt interactions with the polymers. Studies that explore mitigation of these challenges by modifications that produce amphiphilic polysaccharides are are also covered in the review. The promising findings in academic studies thus far suggest future coatings development with these molecules can now shift to testing in commercial resin technologies and more thorough field testing.

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Lopez, A., Wyeth, R.C., and Shetranjiwalla, S. 2026. Antifouling and fouling-release coatings with polysaccharides: a nature-based solution to a marine challenge. Biofouling 42(9): 920–939. doi:10.1080/08927014.2026.2725688.

Congratulations to Victoria Tweedie-Pitre, who has just published her honours thesis research exploring some unexpected complexities of the octopaminergic neuroanatomy of Lymnaea. Kudos also to Yulia Reunova who led the development of the new in situ hybridization chain reaction method in our lab.

The overall finding was that, as expected, mRNA and protein for Tyramine 𝛽 Hydroxylase, the enzyme that produces octopamine, had essentially identical distributions in the brain of the snails. Neurons expressing the gene also had the protein. However, unexpectedly, not all of the cells also expressed octopamine itself, This adds complexity both to understanding the octopaminergic system in brain of the snails as well as interpreting the findings from any one neuroanatomical marker: expression of the mRNA or protein does not necessarily mean the neurotransmitter is actually present in the neuron.

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Tweedie-Pitre, V., Reunova, Y., and Wyeth, R.C. 2026. In Situ Hybridization Chain Reaction and Immunohistochemical Labeling of the Octopamine Production Pathway in the Central Nervous System of Lymnaea stagnalis. Journal of Comparative Neurology 534(6): e70179. doi:10.1002/cne.70179.

We are gearing up to launch a new project looking to exploit AI image analysis capabilities to help streamline biofouling and antifouling research. Dr. Robin Cappaert, who just received his PhD from the University of Tasmania, will be joining the lab as a post-doctoral researcher in the fall. The project is another collaboration with GIT Coatings, and has received support from the new Ear to the Ground program from Research Nova Scotia. Looking forward to having Robin join the lab!

This year’s Canadian Society of Zoology conference was in Ottawa. James Hanlon presented his honours research, which was an analysis of lobster aggresssion and whether it was modulated by the quality of bait used to attract the lobster. Answer: apparently not. Lauren Pictou presented a poster showcasing her honours project describing the cholinergic neuroanatomy of pond snails. Answer: hundreds of cells in the snail’s brain use acetylcholine as their neurotransmitter. And Russell presented the work that Aidan McGowan has spent a bunch of time on, suggesting the lobster behaviors are relatively unaffected by the few other species that are attracted to the bait used to catch lobsters. Oh, and the band at the end-of-conference banquet was awesome.

Congrats to both Lauren Pictou and James Hanlon, would presented their work at both Science Atlantic and StFX Student Research Night (just Lauren).

IMPORTANT: the application process for these positions is now closed!

Post-doctoral Position #1: Foraging behaviour of American Lobster and development of alternative baits for the fishery

This project aims to better understand foraging responses of the American lobster to both natural prey and baits used in the lobster fishery.  The lobster fishery has been thriving, but it crucially depends on the bait placed in traps. The sustainability of the bait supplies for the fishery are thus a critical issue for long-term sustainability of the lobster fishery as whole.  We have developed a system that uses Baited Remote Underwater Video to document lobster responses to both natural prey items and bait, without the complicating factor of traps.  There are three possible next steps for this research:

• collaboration with alternative bait developers to provide scientific testing of bait performance, using a a combination of BRUV and trap tests
• lobster behavioural ecology using retrospective analysis of previously collected BRUV data (~10,000 hours!), facilitated by our development of a comprehensive ethogram for American Lobster
• development of AI-based lobster detection and tracking in BRUV data

All three projects are related, but require very different types of experience: marine field work and boats and fisheries, ethological and video analysis, and image segmentation and AI tools. Experience collaborating with the fishing industry would be beneficial for all three projects. The focus of the two or three-year post-doc will depend on expertise and funding.

Note: All three projects are pending funding approval. Time lines are short for one of the funding options, so applications will begin being considered immediately.

Interested candidates should have (or be about to receive) a PhD degree, with expertise in at least one of the project areas. To apply, send an email to Russell Wyeth with a cover letter explaining your interest and relevant experience. Please also indicate your nationality. Also include transcripts (unofficial are fine initially), a CV, and contact information for 3 references.

Post-doctoral Position #2: AI-based quantification of biofouling community growth and diversity

A key problem for many analyses of marine macrofouling is the laborious measurement of images or video.  Whether tracking invasive species, testing prototype antifouling coatings, or monitoring growth on aquaculture equipment, there is frequently a need to quantify the heterogenous community of organisms that grow on submerged surfaces.  This project aims to develop an AI-based solution to the biofouling analysis problem.  The proliferation of publicly available AI models presents an opportunity to streamline the assessment and analysis of biofouling image data.  In particular, our goal is to automate the extraction of both the identity (i.e., species) and amount (counts and coverage) of biofouling.  A range of machine-learning tools have been developed for biological image analysis in general as well as specific tools for analysis of biofouling images or video.  However, none has yet achieved widespread adoption. Importantly, though, none have yet been built around modern multimodal AI models that have undergone massive development over the last few years. This three-year post-doc will focus on using multimodal AI models to develop easily shared and implemented workflows for analysis of marine macrofouling.

Note: The project is pending funding approval. Time lines are short for one of the funding options, so applications will begin being considered immediately.

Interested candidates should have (or be about to receive) a PhD degree, with expertise in AI-based image analysis and segmentation. Experience with marine biofouling is a not a requirement, although would be an asset alongside image analysis experience. To apply, send an email to Russell Wyeth with a cover letter explaining your interest and relevant experience. Please also indicate your nationality. Also include transcripts (unofficial are fine initially), a CV, and contact information for 3 references.

Congratulations to Miranda Dennis, who completed their PhD in Mike Hart’s lab at SFU and Ka’ala Estores Pacheco who completed their MSc with Ángel Valdés at California Polytechnic, Pomona.

The overall finding from the research was that the two North American species of Hermissenda do not interbreed. Miranda’s work was based on genetic sequences that showed both that the two species were distinct and there was little or no gene flow between the two populations. Ka’ala’s work was focused on lab observations of mating behaviour – members of each species were happy to mate with each other, but when pairs were from opposite species, no mating was observed.

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Dennis, M.T., Ka’ala Estores‐Pacheco, A.L., Williams, K., Wyeth, R.C., Valdés, Á., Mooers, A.Ø., and Hart, M.W. 2026. Demographic Models and Behavioral Assessments Uncover Distinct Species Histories in the Pseudocryptic Nudibranch Genus Hermissenda. Ecology and Evolution 16(2): e73045. doi:10.1002/ece3.73045.

At the start of November, both Russell and Grace presented talks and both Grace and Ryan presented a poster each as well at the the inaugural North American Lobster Science Symposium. The talks have been share online, so here they are, along with Ryan’s poster.

Grace Walls – Biotic and abiotic influences on American lobster, Homarus americanus, response to bait.

[Video Not Available… ]

Grace Walls – Does the American lobster fishery need a bait testing service to
facilitate change in bait use?

Russell Wyeth, – Influences of prey type on American lobster agonistic behaviours

Ryan Bergman – Juvenile Lobster in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence – A Baseline Density & Behavioural
Survey