Yuchi Guo

Exploring the dynamics of coral-algae symbiosis under changing physical conditions

Keywords: Segmentation, Cnidarian, Imaging, Symbiosis, Method

To assist with coral reef bleaching and coral-algae symbiosis research, this project develops a method to quantify algae symbiont number and density within Aiptasia, a Cnidarian that forms a similar symbiotic relationship to corals. This new method pipeline includes a mounting and imaging protocol followed by segmentation of symbionts using a Cellpose machine learning model and provides a quantitative readout of symbiont numbers and density which will enable the tracking of symbiotic relationship state over time in bleaching scenarios.