The course emphasis will be on functional requirements and constraints for embryos, larvae, and juveniles of marine animals. Topics will include parental investment per ovum, fertilization, parental protection and retention of embryos, extraembryonic nutrition, larval feeding and swimming, functional morphology of embryos and larvae, dispersal, settling, mortality, recruitment, effects of larval nutrition on performance of juveniles, juvenile ecology, and evolutionary transitions between modes of development.

Richard Emlet brings special expertise with functional and evolutionary morphology of larvae, evolutionary transitions between modes of development, and performance measurements of newly metamorphosed juveniles. Danny Grünbaum brings special expertise of biomechanics, and modeling of the effects of currents, turbulence, and behavior of larvae on larval distributions.

A course plan will include two short research projects by groups of two or more students (voluntary associations) with a short written paper from each project which instructors’ review for return of a revised copy. Students have the option of continuing their first project. A stimulus and guide to the students is a list of new questions and approaches to answering them (from the instructors) that indicates original research that might be feasible within the constraints of time, environments, biota, and available equipment. Students commonly modify these suggested projects and sometimes suggest a completely different project that is interesting, feasible, and within the course topics. The objective is development of questions and skills, not publication, but projects in this course have led to numerous published papers and several dissertations in the past.

One or two lectures each day and discussion of a published research paper each week will provide background on this field of research. The course will also include demonstration of methods to the whole class, especially in the first week, and mathematical modeling exercises closely tied to laboratory work and lectures.  The course will reflect recent advances in key research areas and exploit the novel environmental time series provided by the new Friday Harbor Labs Ocean Observatory.

Instructors for this course are:

• Richard Emlet, Oregon Institute of Marine Biology
• Danny Grunbaum, School of Oceanography, University of Washington

Enrollment is limited to 15 students. No textbook is required for this course.

Note:  Student transcripts from University of Washington will list “FHL 548: Advanced Topics in Evolution and Development”