Question: what got you so interested in studying rivers and drinking water.
Keywords: drinkingwater, motivation, rivers
Comments
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That’s very interesting I would like to know if sharks from south Africa are breeding with sharks from Australia and if sharks were doing this what would this mean.
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Well the problem with large marine animals at the moment is the population sizes are very small due to pollution and over fishing. If a population is large the chances of two animals mating who are related is very small were as in a small population the chance of two animals mating which are related is much higher. This could mean that in small populations they are inbreeding (i.e. brothers mating with sisters, etc) which is bad because this would create genetic disorders (two related animals shouldn’t mate because their DNA is so similar so it causes genetic diseases). However, if we can see that these animals are mating with animals very far away (for example, south Australia to south Africa) this would mean that they are not inbreeding so their populations are healthier than we first thought and they wont have any genetic diseases. However, if we see that they are not mating with other populations far away then this means the species is in great danger because their populations may decrease further due to inbreeding.
It is very interesting work so that’s why I hope in the near future to be involved with that type of genetic studies.
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Well it would be bad if the sharks were inbreeding and getting genetic diseases. If sharks were inbreeding how could we stop it or do something about it.
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We couldn’t really do anything about it. We could try and introduce new sharks to the area from other regions but there is no guarantee that a shark would survive such a stressful ordeal like getting shipped to the other side of the world. I don’t think sharks are inbreeding because they do travel very long distances but I think its more of a problem with whales and fish species who don’t travel as far.
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Well if the other species of animals were inbreeding what would happen to there population.
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Same problem as the sharks example. Genetic diseases and reduced reproductive fitness (they would have less babies) so their populations would be in even more trouble.
lmcin83
I started out doing marine biology and genetics. Then when I was applying for PhDs I came across this freshwater research project which seemed interesting. The reason being, all rivers lead to the ocean and the majority of pollutants around coastal regions actually come from polluted rivers flowing out into the ocean. So by doing this project I would be helping to clean the rivers and clean up the oceans too.
The drinking water stuff was kind of a by-product, as South Australia Water corporation gave me money to do my research in return for me doing some research for them.
I’m interested in using genetics (studying animals DNA) to help restore our oceans to health and study animal populations. For example by sequencing the DNA in water I can find out what animals are there. Some animals can live in polluted environments and some cant. So if I sequence lots of DNA from animals who can live in pollution and find no DNA from animals who cannot live in pollution I know the river is unhealthy.
In future I would like to study the DNA of larger marine animals like fish, sharks or whales and figure out if different populations from different parts of the world are breeding together. For example, I could see if sharks in south Africa are breeding with sharks in south Australia by looking at their DNA.
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