Freshwater sponge and diatom team presents at the annual Geological Society of America meeting in Pittsburgh

This summer Garrett Robertson and Minnie Pozefsky performed superb research on the sponges and diatoms in a core from Brown’s Lake near Shreve, Ohio. Their project is summarized here. Today Garrett presented their work, along with others on the NSF-funded team, at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Garrett is pictured above with the poster. (Thanks, Greg Wiles, for the image!)

Minnie Pozeksky, shown above, specialized in the diatoms, mastering their taxonomy, paleoecology, and statistical distribution. She is now a first-year student at Williams College. Garrett is finishing his Senior Independent Study at Wooster on the sponges this year.

In this photomicrograph, one of Garrett’s sponge spicules is above, and one of Minnie’s diatoms is below.

Garrett and Minnie were a fun, creative and very productive team to work with. Their work will continue as we add to it over the next summer.

Wooster was very well represented at this GSA meeting by faculty, students and alumni. We have a proud tradition of mentored research at Wooster. At meetings like this, where our current students converse with our alumni, we see the compounding value of this research over the years.

Reference:

Robertson, G.R.*, Pozefsky, M.E.*, Wilson, M.A., Wiles, G.C., Wiesenberg, N., Lowell, T.V., Diefendorf, A.F. and Corcoran, M. 2023. Preliminary analysis and paleoenvironmental assessment of the sponges and diatoms preserved in a Late Holocene to Recent sediment core from Brown’s Lake, Wayne County, Ohio. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, vol. 55, no. 6, doi: 10.1130/abs/2023AM-392825.