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The Coral Reed Research Foundation
came over to South Africa to collect samples for the National Cancer Institute.
The samples are stored in the
NCI National Products Repository. Rhodes Chemistry department also analysed
the samples.
A group from the Scripps Institue of Oceonography came over to collect samples.
Catherine S. McFadden (Professor of Biology, Department of Biology Harvey
Mudd College) joined by
Bernard Picton (Curator of Marine Invertebrates at the Ulster Museum in Northern
Ireland, Estefania
(Fani) Rodriguez, a Spanish sea anemone taxonomist who is presently a post-doctoral
researcher at Ohio State as well as Rebecca Helm, an American post-grad student
who is spending the year on a Fulbright Fellowship in Mark Gibbons' lab at University
of the Western Cape, visited Algoa Bay, Port Elizabeth from the 9th to 15th of March
2008.
Catherine is working on the molecular systematics of octocorals (on a large NSF-funded
Cnidarian Tree of Life grant) read more at http://cnidarian.info.
The goal of this 5-year grant is to construct a highly resolved molecular phylogeny
that includes representatives of all families of cnidarians. They are funded to
undertake several collecting expeditions over the course of the grant, and South
Africa is an area that is of high priority for her because of the many endemic species
of alcyoniid soft corals found there (family Alcyoniidae is highly polyphyletic
and as a result is an important focal taxon for them).
We were fortunate to dive with and observe these dedicated scientists in action.
Algoa Bay is unique in its biodiversity and abundance of benthic marine reef invertebrates.
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