הצטרפ.ה ב:אוק' 23, 2018 פעילות אחרונה: יוני 9, 2021 iNaturalist
Student at the Baker Biogeochemistry Lab at the University of Hong Kong. Haven't pinned down a direction yet, but my interest is in scleractinian taxonomy.
I've been around aquariums since I could walk and have fallen in love with everything anthozoan and aquatic. My first project at HKU was also my first taste of "scientific" coral taxonomy: a task to ID skeletal samples of over 200 unique coral species from the American Samoa. I finished the project in the winter of 2017, but I still constantly yearn for the suspense, excitement and gratification of being able to place a final ID after hours of studying. I would describe the satisfaction as a combination between the euphoria a mathematician feels after producing an elegant proof for an obscure conjecture, and the sense of accomplishment an artist experiences while placing the last brushstrokes on their masterpiece.
As academia progresses to become more objective, numerical and clinical, the science of taxonomy is a becoming dying art. More and more studies are ignoring the morphological, ontogenetic and ecological diversity of species. It is imperative for us to keep this declining discipline from disappearing. I sense that it is my duty as a member of the next generation to carry the olympic flame from the predeceasing taxonomists. Hopefully after reading this bio, I have sparked a little ember within you to go protect your own clade of organisms.
Species I've described or helped describe:
My coral memepage, which I made in the hospital while I thought I was going to die of osteomyelitis, which I contracted while diving: https://www.facebook.com/coralmemesoligotrophicteens/