Last July’s Tide Bite described the experience of an undergraduate TA at FHL (Tide Bite – July 2026); this month’s essay is written by a grad student who has been a TA repeatedly at FHL (for my class…and mighty good she is at it!). Both writers comment on how intense the experience is when working with an FHL class – but in each case, how personally rewarding. It’s hard work, but how many jobs pay people to spend 3 months on San Juan Island, exploring the shore and admiring amazing marine life, while making positive change in the lives and careers of students? Jen also managed to do her own research when not in the classroom!

Best,
Dr. Megan Dethier, FHL Director
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An Ode to Form

by Jennifer Ortiz

As a young girl, I spent time among the public library’s book stacks, flipping through every marine biology book I could find, drawn to the alien nature of marine invertebrates.  I joke that my love of shape has carried me far. It led me to the University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL), about 1,500 miles from my home state of Iowa, and through my doctoral degree.

In the UW Biology Department, I explore the relationship between form and environment in the common dogwhelk Nucella lamellosa.  If you have ever explored the rocky intertidal at low tide, you have likely encountered this Pacific predatory gastropod.  These snails are known for drastic variation in shell morphology, which drew Trevor Kincaid, a founder of FHL, to collect and study N. lamellosa alongside other invertebrates in the early 1900s.  My interest in this shell variation lies in an abiotic factor: flow.  The rocky intertidal is a highly dynamic environment that changes by the hour, and no two sites are identical.  When the tide returns, organisms contend with flow forces that vary with tidal exchange and turbulence caused by the rocky topography.  Organisms resist dislodgment through two broad strategies, which can occur independently or together.  They can reduce the force they experience by flexing with the flow – streamlining their shape – or by shrinking the surface area exposed to it.  Alternatively, they can attach so strongly that the forces at their site pose no risk of dislodgment.

A central question of my dissertation is whether shell traits such as length, aperture size (the shell opening), and external ornamentation can offer insight into the flow conditions an individual can withstand.  Ornamentation takes the form of ruffled shell protrusions called lamellae, which give the species its name, though they are not always present.  I am also interested in how shell morphology influences the way snails orient themselves in flow.  More broadly, this work asks how organisms balance form and function in environments that are never still.  If shell traits reflect the flow conditions associated with a given morphology, they could help us interpret historical collections and anticipate how populations might respond as conditions shift.

To answer these questions, I have spent the past spring and summer seasons at FHL, with the intertidal close at hand, the expertise of scientists based at FHL and those visiting (both faculty and other graduate students), and the equipment available to me.  I collected snails from sites identified through Kincaid’s historical collections, word of mouth, and my own observations of both ruffled and smooth-shelled populations, then brought them back to the labs for behavioral experiments in a recirculating flow tank where flow speed could be controlled.  In attachment-strength trials, I crafted snail harnesses from fishing line and netting and used a force gauge to measure the force required to dislodge an individual.  Shells attached to a force transducer let me measure the drag they experienced at different orientations to the flow.  Hand measurements with calipers captured most shell traits, and the microCT scanner will help me calculate a surface roughness index to quantify external architecture.  I also learned to build dynamometers, designed by Dr. Emily Carrington, who has generously shared her expertise as a member of my dissertation committee, to deploy at my collection sites and measure flow.

Early results suggest that ruffles may be a disadvantage in strong flow.  Ruffled shells experience far more drag than smooth shells of the same size, an effect that outweighs any difference in attachment strength and leaves ruffled snails more vulnerable to dislodgment.  Orientation matters too: as flow speeds up, snails turn to face into the current, reducing the drag they experience.  So far, I have found no evidence that shell morphology influences orientation behavior.  Whatever the results ultimately show, looking closely at form – whether a shell under the calipers, layers of a 3D reconstruction, or a snail in a flow tank – is what draws me to this work.

My research has been supported by the Charles Lambert Memorial Endowment (2025) and research assistantships through FHL.  Having benefited from the opportunities, expertise, and generosity of the FHL community, I see teaching as a way to pass some of that generosity on to students.

Working as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for the Invertebrate Zoology portion of the ZooBot Program – a joint Zoology and Botany course offered at FHL – lets me share my love of invertebrate anatomy with others.  My duties vary by day: collecting organisms, performing dissections, and assisting students in the field and with their research projects.  The classroom is rich and lively, with each day shaped by what we find off the dock or around the island.  It is a very different experience from the marine invertebrate course I took as an undergraduate, which was held in a windowless classroom with only preserved, jarred specimens.  This has been my most fulfilling TA appointment.

The first week of class can be overwhelming as everyone adjusts to long days of chalkboard lectures and microscope observations.  Even so, I find myself continually awed by the strange beauty of organisms in the ever-changing flow-through tanks at the center of the lab.  Having served as a TA for this course three times alongside FHL’s director, Dr. Megan Dethier, I know that despite how much the content varies from day to day, the class has a steady rhythm.  The morning lecture begins first thing, accompanied by the smell of coffee carried in from breakfast to a slightly chilly classroom.  We then move to the lab until lunchtime to observe and draw organisms that we just covered in lecture, then repeat the process until dinner.  Field trips break this rhythm, and they provide crucial context for understanding how the shapes and forms we observe in the lab play out in the field.

As the course progresses, it is uniquely satisfying to watch students sharpen their observation skills and lean into their curiosity.  This is most visible when they begin proposing and carrying out their own projects.  In those moments, I recognize the girl in the library stacks, drawn to something strange and wonderful, and I am grateful to help the next curious person follow this sense of wonder.

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