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Tucked in the mangrove thickets of the Turks and Caicos islands are a series of saltwater ponds with extreme biodiversity. They host jellyfish, barracudas, horn snails, sea turtles, lugworms, and a wide range of aquatic plants and algae.

St. Olaf College students Brooke Ellis ’26 and Evgenia Roth ’26 traveled to these ponds and spent four days conducting research on their ecology with Professor of Biology Eric Cole. This work was supported by St. Olaf’s Magnus the Good award, which funds faculty-student collaborations dedicated to research across all disciplines.

The group’s research focused on the behavior of upside-down jellyfish young, called polyps. These polyps live out their developmental stage attached to other surfaces — usually, decaying mangrove leaves. However, in one special pond, jellyfish polyps seem to prefer the shells of the resident horn snails, another marine creature. Polyps only attach to snail shells that are encrusted with a particular biological film. In order to learn about the reason for the preference, Ellis, Roth, and Cole gathered samples of this film for further analysis.

It was an opportunity for Ellis and Roth to gain more experience with the day-to-day of what research looks like in the field. 

“Research has an element of the ecstatic, when you make a discovery,” says Cole. “It’s got a much bigger element that is dry and boring, like eating a pound of sawdust without butter — doing the thing and repeating it, making mistakes and fixing them. That’s a lot of what science is about. The machinery of doing science is not always glamorous, and yet that rare discovery somehow just validates all the sawdust you choked down to get there. Brooke and Evgenia got a taste of both the ecstatic and the hard work that’s involved in doing science.”

Both Ellis and Roth plan to attend graduate school in marine biology. Ellis plans to pursue a Ph.D. in shark ecology, and wants to work on the front lines with local communities to develop sustainable job opportunities in the field. Roth hopes to use genetics to study the resilience of corals in the face of climate change and ocean acidification. Their work in the Turks and Caicos helped give them the confidence to continue working toward Ph.D. programs. 

“As a little kid, I never thought about marine biology,” says Roth. “It just wasn’t on my radar. I knew I wanted to do wildlife conservation biology when I was going into college, but I didn’t realize until I started reading research papers that maybe this is what I’m supposed to do with my life. Without these opportunities from St. Olaf, I would absolutely be nowhere near feeling confident enough to think ‘Yeah, I can get my Ph.D. in marine biology’ — even at this little landlocked school where there’s no marine biology program.”

Both Ellis and Roth work in Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Physics Anne Gothmann’s paleoclimate lab researching corals and have also participated in other research and study-abroad programs at St. Olaf, including the Environmental Studies in Australia and New Zealand semester-long study-abroad program. 

“Having opportunities like this just reaffirms that I’m doing exactly what I’m meant to be doing, and I am where I’m supposed to be,” says Ellis. “Ultimately I envision my life in Australia, but I wouldn’t be where I am today without the opportunities that St. Olaf has provided me. The support that I’ve received from St. Olaf has severely shaped who I am and who I’m becoming. It has completely nurtured this passion.”