Bearded goby females reveal their reproductive secrets
Yusra Taha is making good progress with her master project on the reproductive biology of female bearded gobies. After a field trip to Namibia, it has been many long hours in the lab.
Hovedinnhold
Yusra writes:
«It is now almost a year since I’ve started working on my master project (Maturity and fecundity of bearded gobies females). I’m studying their reproductive investment depending on ambient oxygen in their natural habitat. Due to that, I went on a visit to their natural habitat, which is the Benguela ecosystem, along with my supervisor Anne Gro, my friend and college Maria (who is working on males) and our lab technician Frank. After two weeks of hard work in National Marine Information and Research Centre (NatMIRC) lab in Swakopmund – Namibia, the outcome was collecting data of almost 1000 (frozen and fresh). In addition to those, my friend and I worked on another 1000 frozen fish here in UiB lab. Those data included weight and length of fish, wet and dry weight of gonads and collecting otolith for further studies. I also preserved some gonads in formalin to study the histology of ovaries.
This semester (Fall 2012) is all about preparing slides and studying the maturity of female gonads on histological base. Furthermore, I’ve started to analyse the data using R-program. It is all coming together now and some answers will soon be unfolded, and hopefully, telling us some new and exciting information about our little survivor in Namibia’ coast.»
