What Makes Seagrass Survive? Look to the Microbes
Population Biology Graduate Student Karolina Zabinski Studies Microbes Shaping the Survival of Threatened Coastal Meadows
On her first day of graduate school, Karolina Zabinski rose at 4:00am. She spent the day on the muddy shores of Tomales Bay, collecting eelgrass for a survey of aquatic plant diseases. These ribbon-like seagrasses are common along the California coast and form knee-high meadows that undulate in the water.
As she scooped plants out of the mud, she noticed how much they varied from place to place. Eelgrass (Zostera marina) at one site had long, slender roots. But just a few miles north, the roots were short and bushy.
“They were the same species — but they looked totally different,” says Zabinski, a graduate student in the Population Biology Graduate Group, who is earning her Ph.D. in the laboratory of Jay Stachowicz, a Distinguished Professor of Evolution and Ecology.
Now, as she nears the completion of her Ph.D. research five years later, she has followed that casual observation to a series of discoveries that could help preserve one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth.