b'Growth Rates and Survivorship of JuvenileDwarf Seahorses (Hippocampus zosterae)in a Lab EnvironmentDalila A. SanchezSponsor: Dr. RoseDwarf seahorses (Hippocampus zosterae) are a flagship species for seagrass communities that can provide useful insight for understanding changes in these threatened ecosystems. This study followed ten broods of lab-born dwarf seahorses to determine the growth rates and the survivorship of the offspring in the lab environment. At birth, offspring for each brood were separated into a photo, weight, or non-treatment group to determine the effects of different animal handling techniques used for collecting weekly measurements. Counts for each tank were conducted every four days to produce survivorship curves across broods and treatments. Body lengths measured in ImageJ from the photo treatments and weights were used to calculate growth curves. Brood sizes varied between the ten broods from 4 to 57 offspring and averaged at 26 (5.72) offspring per male. All three manipulation treatments displayed relatively high offspring survivorship during the first 30 days with a trend of decline in survivorship after that timepoint. The results from the data collected will aid in experimental design considerations for future lab experiments dealing with seahorse growth and survivorship. The outcomes will better classify measurements of indirect fitness for this species, which allows for better seahorse conservation practices in the wild.Improving Reproducibility of Spore Productionby Nothopassalora personata in CultureReginald M. HunterDr. CantonwineNothopassalora personata is a fungal pathogen of peanut, causing late leaf spot. In vitro studies have been limited due to poor reproducibility of spore production in the lab. Since January 2022, Dr. Emily Cantonwine and I have worked to quantify the number of spores produced by four morphological forms of N. personata to see if reproducibility issues are related to isolate form or media type. The four forms of the fungus observed are the brown, reddish-brown, red, and pink forms. Each form was grown on three types of media, water agar,PDA, and PDA, for comparison. Homogenization methods were used to induce sporulation for each isolate form on each media type. Microscopy was used to count the number of spores produced. Preliminary results suggest that across all media and forms, sporulation is lowest on water agar, and similarly high onPDA and PDA. Also, the reddish-brown and brown forms produced greater numbers of spores than the pink and red forms. Further studies will be conducted to evaluate spore germination rates for each isolate form, and to determine if isolate age affects spore production. 17'