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Publication Date

2022-05-09

First Advisor

Laura A. Katz

Document Type

Honors Project

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Biological Sciences

Keywords

freshwater Foraminifera, Foraminifera biodiversity

Abstract

Foraminifera are time keepers of our Earth's history. Forams are single-celled microeukaryotes (i.e protists) that belong to the major clade Rhizaria and have granuloreticulopidia, or fine anastomosing pseudopods. Foraminifera possess agglutinated, calcareous or organic tests (i.e. shells) that can be either monothalamous (single chambered) or polythalamous (multi-chambered; Pawlowski et al.,1999; Holzmann et al., 2003; Siemensa et al., 2021). Foraminifera are known from mostly marine and brackish habitats and only a few freshwater lineages have been characterized. In fact, non-marine (brackish, freshwater) foraminifera are one of the least known groups of protists and only a handful of species have been described since the 19th century. Research in the last few years based on habitats other than marine, have revealed the existence of foraminifera in other environments, such as freshwater, soil and moss (Siemensma et al., 2021). Freshwater foraminifera are a terrestrial species of monothalimids (a polyphyletic group) formerly known as “allogromiids”. Some possess a single-chambered test that can be organic or partially agglutinated, with particles gathered from surrounding sediments (Siemensma et al., 2017, 2021). In my research, I used molecular methods to examine the diversity of freshwater foraminifera at Hawley Bog MA (a local bog), along four sites taken from two transects: the edge of the open fen at forest (site 1 ), through the open fen (sites 3 and 5) and the edge along the open water (site 7) (Ruggerio et al., 2020). RNA from the samples were PCRed using foraminifera specific primers, showing that all investigated sites detected the presence of foraminiferal RNA (Thakur et al., 2022). Gene trees were curated and Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) was used to show similarities or dissimilarities in foraminiferal communities. The results of my research will help challenge the view of foraminifera as mostly marine organisms and provide greater insight into freshwater foraminifera, helping to expand our knowledge of the understudied taxa.

Rights

©2022 Tarrin D'Aniello. Access limited to the Smith College community and other researchers while on campus. Smith College community members also may access from off-campus using a Smith College log-in. Other off-campus researchers may request a copy through Interlibrary Loan for personal use.

Language

English

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