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Marine Affairs major Jessica Stumper '18, and Marine Sciences major Lauren Duffin'17 presented their research projects at the 44^th Maine Biological and Medical Sciences Symposium (MBMSS) at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Stumper’s poster, "Claw force measurements of four genetically different populations in the invasive European green crab, Carcinus maenas," was co-authored by Marine Sciences major Pierce Lancor '19, Marine Sciences graduate student Louis Logan, and Markus Frederich, Ph.D., professor of Marine Sciences. In this project, Stumper built a force gauge and developed a technique to measure the claw force in green crabs from Maine, Newfoundland and Iceland. These genetically different populations show different levels of aggression and lead to differential damage to eel grass beds. Stumper discovered they all produce the same amount of peak claw force, therefore the respectively differential destructiveness of the crabs in an eelgrass bed cannot be explained by different amounts of developed force.

Duffin’s poster, "Morphological distinction between populations of the European Green Crab (Carcinus maenas) via digitizing carapaces," was co-authored by Frederich and Professor Joseph Kunkel, Ph.D. In this project Duffin digitized more than 150 green crabs from Maine, Newfoundland and Iceland, applied advanced statistics using R-scripts and showed that these genetically different populations of the same species of crabs have a significantly different body shape. Maine green crabs are longer and broader, while Icelandic green crabs are shorter and narrower. Whether this morphological difference is caused by genetics or by living in different substrates will be the subject of a future study.

Both projects are part of Frederich's larger research program on invasive species that involves multiple undergraduate and graduate students. One current focus is to characterize population-specific features of the highly invasive green crab. This research aims at getting a better understanding of the invasiveness of the crabs. The Maine Biological and Medical Sciences Symposium at MDIBL where Stumper and Duffin presented their work is an annual regional conference with about 200 attendees from all over Maine. Frederich is on the organizing committee for the conference.

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